The Unified Theory of Steroids

Originally written on February 14, 2009

How can a drug make a man hit 73 home runs? It can't.

Let's separate the player's health from all his skills. Hand/eye co-ordination, strength, years of knowledge from playing the game.

It seems like it's all older players who are prominent in the steroids saga.

So, I propose that the steroids delay the deterioration of the player's health, including vision.

While the skills curve goes up over time, then plateaus, the health curve is constantly declining. Add them together, and they sort of even each other out with the skills curve being dominant, until health wins the battle, and the curve goes down.

So, the steroids delay the decline of the health curve. So, for a while, the health curve levels out, while the skills curve is still climbing.

This fits in with the book 'Outliers'. He says it takes 10,000 hours of doing something before you're an expert at that. Good for opera singers and chess players, bad for athletes. Hello, Mr. Steroids!