On the recordMarch 10, 2014
I am honored to be joining Senator Schatz who has been working with Senator Whitehouse and with Senator Boxer to put together this very important discussion, very important evening. While we are discussing climate change, I thought I would first talk a little bit about baseball. Something very funny happened in baseball. From 1920 all the way through the entire modern baseball history, the average number of players who hit more than 40 homeruns in a season was 3. That is all--Babe Ruth, Hank Greenberg, Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Ted Williams, Joe DiMaggio. No matter who was playing in the United States, the average number of players was 3.3 who made it over 40 homeruns in a season. Then something very strange started to happen. All of a sudden there was a dramatic spike in the number of players who could hit more than 40 homeruns. In 1996 it went up to 17 players all of a sudden, with an average of only 3.3 who hit more than 40 homeruns. Year after year the same thing was occurring. Then it occurred to someone, maybe they are injecting these players with steroids. Now some people said, no, the ballparks are getting smaller, maybe they are corking the bats, maybe they are juicing the baseball. But, no, it turned out that they were injecting steroids into baseball players.…
