This SI.com article contains the excerpts from the new book about Barry Bonds’ alleged steroid use that has received a fair amount of media play this week.
However, as noted in this earlier post, the issue of whether use of steroids allowed Bonds to hit more home runs than he otherwise would have hit is an entirely different issue and not as clear-cut as most folks assume. Art DeVany has written this paper on the subject and here is the abstract:
There has been no change in MLB home run hitting for 45 years, in spite of the new records. Players hit with no more power now than before. Records are the result of chance variations in at bats, home runs per hit, and other factors. The clustering of records is implied by the intermittency of the law of home runs. Home runs follow a stable Paretian distribution with infinite variance. The shape and scale of the distribution have not changed over the years. The stable Paretian law of home runs generalizes the laws of extreme human performance developed by Pareto, Lotka, Price, and Murray. The greatest home run hitters are as rare as great scientists, artists, or composers.
By the way, don’t miss this hilarious DeVany post on taking a meal in a sports bar.
Art’s paper was great reading. I learned more in the first 5-6 pages than a life time of watching baseball — should be mandatory reading for baseball fans.
I do have one question that maybe he can answer — was the pitching during the Ruth era better or worse than in the Bonds era — I think a paper of similar nature would wrap the home run v steroid issue in a nice bow.
Andy