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Pitchers, on the other hand, generally get lots of rest between appearances, making the energy boost from amphetamines less helpful or necessary. For the everyday player though, losing that amphetamine boost has been a disaster. Oh, and in case you're wondering, there were 5,386 home runs in 2006. In 2012, just 4,934.

Coincidentally, since amphetamines were banned, the rate of diagnosis for ADHD in baseball has skyrocketed to twice the national average, resulting in hundreds of players each year receiving exemptions to take drugs like Adderall, which, of course, are basically amphetamines. Imagine that.

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So what does all this mean? Well, if amphetamines really do have the impact on hitting that the statistics seem to indicate, and if the steroid era really didn't start until sometime in the '90s, doesn't every record set when hitters had the benefit of using amphetamines but pitchers didn't have the benefit of using steroids deserve the same asterisk we're so eager to affix to the steroid-era records? If amphetamines have really been around for seven or eight decades like Bud Selig says, that covers everything from Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak to Pete Rose's all time hits record and everything in between.

Steroids didn't make baseball a dirty game. It's just a lot easier to write off the past two decades of professional baseball history as tainted when the alternative is admitting that baseball has always been a dirty game.

Adam hosts a podcast called Unpopular Opinion that you should check out right here. You should also be his friend on Twitter, Facebook and Tumblr.