I couldn’t care less whether Rodriquez cheats on his wife. Hell, Ty Cobb was literally one of the worst people ever, and if he were playing today, I have no doubt he would be jacked on steroids. But fans deciding to despise Barry Bonds for being an unrepentant cheater is no hypocrisy.
I wish there were some die hard baseball fan out there willing to take one for the team and assassinate Bonds before he “breaks” Aaron’s record.
And those pictures shouldn’t be so easily dismissed.
Many great athletes are assholes. That makes them bad people. It doesn’t in any way change what they achieved in the sport.
Taking steroids doesn’t make you an asshole. You can take steroids and still be a really nice guy. You just can’t take them and have your supposed “achievements” in sportsmanship retain any meaning.
I don’t mean to piss all over something that has personal significance for you. But…um…I am anyway, because the standard of actually being good at something through your own efforts is an important one, and it’s disappearing from sports partly through the actions of frankensluggers like Bonds.
(As far as arguing that no one has ever proved he took them…please. The guy copped deals so as not to have to name his clients, obviously to conceal the guilt of his clients. Besides which, leaks of testimony about Bonds have been published.)
I think we’ll all have agree to disagree about the whole steroids thing because some people like to rely on assumptions rather than facts.
Anyways, I’m going to try to catch his home run ball if he hits it at home because then I’ll be riiiiiich!
I am not one for Barry Bonds either, though I doubt very much he is a jerk. I think that’s been trumped up by the tabloids to sell their funny pages, and everyone has started to jump on the bandwagon.
Anyway personally I don’t really watch baseball unless the Angels are doing good, like they are this year, or the world series. I’m more a football man myself.
The plain, simple fact, is that Barry Bonds is merely one of MANY players current and recently retired – including some of the pitchers he’s faced and runners he’s had to try and throw out – who have been on the juice. Including some guys on YOUR favorite team [no matter which team that happens to be]. This is The Steroid Era, just like 1900-1919 was the Dead Ball Era, and EVERYONE’s stats are affected accordingly. [The guys who cheat put up better numbers. The guys who stay “clean”, their stats suffer, as they don’t keep up with the Jonses.] He is no better and no worse than any of them.
But nobody cares about the other people who use. Nobody even knows who they are, because they don’t want to find out. No no, far better to believe that Barry is the one and only bad guy and if we’d just strike his name from the record books, or force him to retire, or – ASSASSINATE HIM? Really, Sil? Did you write all those letters to Hank back in the day too? – then everything would be all better in our pure and clean and pristine national game. Because Barry’s the only cheater, and once we get rid of him then, gosh darnit and dag gummit, nobody will ever cheat anymore. All the other guys will magically stop, and we’ll be able to pretend they never even cheated in the first place. Nobody ever popped a greenie, nobody ever took a steroid, nobody ever corked their bat, nobody ever spit on the ball, nobody ever rubbed pine tar up past 18’’, nobody gambled on games he was playing or managing in, until that evil cheater and all around jerk and nogoodnik Barry Bonds tainted our pure clean game. We’ll have our scapegoat and whipping boy, and we’ll be mollified and go right back to watching the Steroid Home Run Parade every night on ESPN sportscenter.
Sorry folks, but he wasn’t the first. He isn’t alone. And he’s not going to be the last.
Barry didn’t bring them into the game [roids go back at least as far as Canseco], and Barry isn’t the only one using. YET, the fans and the press single him out as though he is, because they don’t like him, because he doesn’t pursue a relationship with them. Sammy Sosa knew how to kiss babies and shake hands and smile big and wide and be nice to everybody, which is why he is still beloved even though steroids MADE him. Go look at Sosa’s numbers from 97 and before sometime. Sosa juiced himself out of mediocrity and into the hall of fame. Nobody throws syringes at him. How come?
Because, as I’ve said before, it isn’t really about the steroids with Barry. It’s about Barry not letting us sit at the cool kids table with him. Steroids is just what sticks best to smear him as punishment for slighting us in that way. And in general fans really don’t care if their favorite athletes cheat or are assholes or anything like that as long as they keep helping their team win. That’s Barry’s other problem. He helps his team beat other people’s favorite teams (well, not so much anymore as he’s really too old to be effective. He’s past it and should retire. But a few years ago, when every pitcher was shitting their pants at the sight of him and he drew 200 intentional walks a season, he was a difference in who won a given game).
If it is about the steroids, then please either start throwing syringes at Sammy and all the others, or stop throwing them at Bonds. Kick them all out and put asterisks by ALL of their career stats, or kick none of them out. Both the guys who’ll make the hall of fame because of it and the guys who take them and still suck.
If steroids are so EVIL and so corrupting to the sanctity of the game and so much worse than how past generations cheated in baseball, I mean. And not just this generation of ballplayers’ form of cheating [Every era has had its cheaters. Some of them all made the hall of fame too] and our Moral Outrage Flavor Of The Month.
Stop lynching Barry so your team’s cheater can get off anonymous and scot-free as he shoots up from the shelter of Barry’s Shadow. Or at least if you’re going to lynch Barry, stop buying tickets every time the Giants come to your town, and stop popping 400 flashbulbs timed to coincide with that historic swing. And stop fighting like pigs at feeding time for that oh so valuable milestone homerun ball. {“You” doesn’t mean you Sorc, clearly, but fans in general.} Lynching with one hand and applauding with the other doesn’t work. Cut it out. If they all are going to get a pass, Barry should too. If Barry is to be condemned, all the others need to be condemned with him.
Bud Selig too, because he sure did love counting all that increased attendance and all that increased revenue that came from the Steroid Home Run Chase of 1998. He loved steroids in baseball then. Now that everyone howls “Cheating” he’s anti-steroids in baseball. Whatever.
And on that note, kick all of us out too. Ban us from attending games. Because we’re no better than Selig in that regard. We loved the Steroid Era so much, attendance skyrocketed in 98 when Sosa and McGwire were juicing their way to record breaking. We popped flashbulbs and we fought over those balls because man could we sure hawk them for a lot of money. When we did that, we voted FOR steroids in baseball, with our pocketbooks. So sit back and enjoy what you chose, boys and girls. This is what your dollars said you wanted.
As for the record…
Hank Aaron “Cheated” Babe Ruth because he had 3000 more career at bats than Babe Ruth. Seriously. People wanted to asterisk him or deny him the record because of this. Now, after Hank’s done it and triumphed in spite of us, we act like we were on his side all along and he was always our hero.
Bonds “cheated” Hank Aaron because he used a performance enhancing drug, functionally equivalent to a steroid, a steroid in spirit. A derivative technically not banned by the league during the time we know him to be taking it (though maybe he kept taking it after. Probably did, actually.)
But you know what, after he retires and isn’t in our face anymore, after we and the media don’t have [STRIKE]Dick Nixon[/STRIKE] Barry Bonds to kick around anymore, guess what? We’ll forgive and forget. We always do. Unless he goes the Pete Rose route and continues to be a jackass, maybe.
Who knows, maybe the roid use will kill him early like it did Ken Caminetti. Bet your bottom dollar that when Barry dies everyone will forgive. We always kiss up to the dead. Also, we’ll be too busy coming up with petty reasons to hate on A-Rod by then.
Speaking of which, I wonder what nonsense we’ll come up with to say Alex Rodriquez “Cheated” when he passes Bonds. Maybe all that money he makes in salary gets spread around to umpires and opposing players as bribe money? Maybe he corks his bat? Maybe being on the Yankees in his prime years was an unfair competitive advantage because the Yankees can buy/stockpile talent in a way that no other team can, and thus he was surrounded by a supporting cast that gave him too much help? That sounds like it’s in the same petty and hypocritical “hater” spirit as what Aaron and Bonds had to face. But who knows how we will try to spit on A-Rod’s greatness in the future?
If Babe Ruth did now what he did then, he’d be a “cheater” too. Think about it; prior to the 1920s, “13” was considered an ASTRONOMICAL single season home run total. There’s a Hall of Famer from the dead ball era named Frank John Baker, nicknamed “Home Run” Baker because he hit home runs so FREAKISHLY often. 132 total in his major league career, sometimes hitting as many as 12 per season. In the dead ball era when homeruns were next to impossible. Then all of a sudden some guy comes along and starts hitting 30, 40, 50 a year? WHAT DRUGS IS HE ON. I BET HE’S USING A CORKED BAT. OMG UNFAIR ADVANTAGE. BOO HOO HOO HIS TEAM IS BEATING OUR TEAM I WISH HE WAS ON OUR TEAM BUT SINCE HE’S NOT HE’S A CHEATER.
Yeah, his unfair advantage is that he adapted to the new rules quicker and better than anyone else, and he ALSO was a better athlete than everyone else he was playing against, and ALSO a better athlete than YOU and ME. That was Barry’s unfair advantage for the first 15 years of his career, too. For the last few its been being a better athlete AND taking the same drugs other people were taking to catch up to him.
Players before 1919 didn’t choose whether or not the pitcher threw a dead ball. Besides that, your analogy is hopeless: do you think the league is going to look the other way as the kid just brought up from the minors juices himself lest he fall behind in the pack? No, what we have now is the Major League star system in full power.
And didn’t you learn that one lesson in first grade, “Just because everyone does it doesn’t make it right”? If your blasé approval of steroid use, Kaiser, were adopted by MLB, there is really no reason to disallow the use of any and all manner of “self-improvement”, from the good old spitball and corked bat to just letting baseball be played by a class of specialized robots.
And I deny your implication that because I frown on steroid use in the modern game, this somehow makes me a racist collaborator with Hank Aaron’s ignominious detractors? Although Bonds apparently shares your dubious view. It’s not about Barry Bonds being “the only cheater” which is blatantly a straw-man argument. Bonds is the most visible, he recieves the requistie amount of scorn.
Barry Bonds is not on steroids, though it is an easy mistake to make. He is, in fact, posessed by a Carp Demon. The only solution to this problem: A young, handsome Sox pitcher by the name of Matsuzaka, whose pitches have the power to drive those demons back to the Netherworld.
In other words: Fuck Barry Bonds, I’m a Sox fan and want ARod to break his record. I’m the proof of the 984’s argument.
You should watch the Angels even if they’re not doing well because Vlady’s on their team! He is sooooo amazing!
Silhouette, didn’t you ever learn the kindergarten lesson of LISTENING to what other people say when they talk to you.
READING COMPREHENSION, my friend. I never said Barry was right to do it. I said that all the other guys who are doing it are ALSO wrong. And therefore WE the fans, you and me, are WRONG to single Barry out.
Punish all the cheaters or punish none of them. I would rather let everyone in baseball use steroids if they they choose to shrink their gonads and shorten their lifespans in exchange for being able to hit the ball farther, than to keep steroids illegal and then punish some of the players who use them – because they have unpleasant personalities who rub us the wrong way – and not punish others who use them because “oh we like them better.” I hate to harp on Sammy Sosa again and again as my example of this because he is by all accounts that I’ve heard a genuinely nice guy. But Steroids clearly transformed him from an adequate/decent player who’d be forgotten after he retired, into a Hall of Famer. If it’s REALLY about the steroids, then they both need to go. And so do all the others.
But nobody seems to want to kick all the other guys out, just Barry. So maybe it’s not really about the steroids after all. And that’s my thesis. Maybe it’s ACTUALLY about how we always find an excuse to hate on the guy who comes close to breaking this record. Or maybe it’s about we having a rod up our ass about Barry, for some personal reason.
And I deny your implication that because I frown on steroid use in the modern game, this somehow makes me a racist collaborator with Hank Aaron’s ignominious detractors?
No, the fact that you said that someone should murder Barry Bonds to prevent him from breaking the record puts you on par with the racists who threatened Hank Aaron. Because in fact that is precisely what they threatened to do to him.
Now, would you prefer one of his fellow juicers did the job or do you want your assassin to be clean and pure and drug free? If one of the juicers does it, would you advocate putting an asterisk next to his career kill total because steroids gave him an unfair advantage in stabbing strength?
It’s not about Barry Bonds being “the only cheater” which is blatantly a straw-man argument. Bonds is the most visible, he recieves the requistie amount of scorn.
So because the other cheaters chose retirement to hide from testing and exposure (Palmerio) when the heat got turned up, and Barry chose to continue to play, Barry has to answer for their sins as well as his own. As well as all the sins of the guys currently getting away with it because we can’t be bothered to do the detective work to find out who they are. Wonderful. Barry goes down, and all the other cheaters can keep shooting up because “we got the boogeyman, everything’s okay now, investigation over, boy your home runs sure are pretty.” Barry is more guiltier because he’s more famouser. I love your logic.
No, it’s not about Barry being the only cheater. It’s about people acting like he is and treating him as though he is, when we ALL know better. Whether it’s because they hate his attitude, or whether it’s because he’s good enough to challenge an all-time record, it’s hypocritical.
NOW, if you hate on Barry BECAUSE you think he’s an asshole, okay. Just admit that is your reasoning. Don’t say “because he cheated” without hating on all the other cheaters. Yeah, just because they all cheated too, and cheated first, that doesn’t get him off the hook. But by the same token, just because he cheated best doesn’t exonerate them.
OR, if you hate on Barry because you’d rather see Hank keep the record, or rather see A-Rod get the record himself someday, that’s also cool. Because that’s not really hating on Barry so much as it is supporting your guy. That’s just plain being a baseball fan.
BUT, if you say say Fuck Barry Bonds [Because he’s a cheater], Cool. Just make sure you also say Fuck Sammy Sosa, Fuck Mark McGwire, Fuck Rafael Palmerio, Fuck Jason Giambi, Fuck Alex Rodriquez, Fuck Roger Clemens, and Fuck All The Guys We Don’t Know By Name Yet As Soon As We Find Out Who They Are, Because They Are/Were Cheaters. I don’t wanna say “fuck” any of them, personally.
[P.S. OMG when was the last time I posted so regularly and so vehemently around here LOL there’s a fire under my ass all of a sudden :)]
I’m not interested in reading your post when you decided to throw the Braves into the mix. Sore subject my friend. In regards to the Jonses, I’d have to say that steroids haven’t been a problem. They’ve had consistent numbers and have looked the same physically since they’ve gotten to Atlanta, and I’ve watched them since the beginning. According to an article I read several years ago, General Manager John Schurholz and Manager Bobby Cox said they’ve only ever had one player suspected of juicing, and even though he said he wasn’t he was released anyway. I agree, however, that this is the Steroid era, and while it’s really possible that people on my favorite team are or have used steroids, until it’s proven I won’t believe it. I just won’t. >.<
I still say the evidence is pretty clear on Barry Bonds.
No it’s not! Their only evidence is you’re guilty by association. If they actually had a case against him, they wouldn’t have to investigate him this long. The government would have indicted him as soon as they got enough evidence, but they don’t have anyyyy! Therefore Barry’s not guilty.
All you’ve really go to do is read his grand jury testimony, which was leaked to the press and is outlined in a San Fransisco Chronicle article:
Federal prosecutors confronted Bonds during his testimony on Dec. 4, 2003, with documents indicating he had used steroids and human growth hormone during a three-year assault on baseball’s home run record, but the Giants star denied the allegations.
During the three-hour proceeding, two prosecutors presented Bonds with documents that allegedly detailed his use of a long list of drugs: human growth hormone, Depo-Testosterone, undetectable steroids known as “the cream” and “the clear,” insulin and Clomid, a drug for female infertility sometimes used to enhance the effect of testosterone.
The documents, many with Bonds’ name on them, are dated from 2001 through 2003. They include a laboratory test result that could reflect steroid use and what appeared to be schedules of drug use with billing information, prosecutors told the grand jury.
You can see the article here.
Look, he’s guilty. We may not find out soon, but in the years to come it’ll surface. Probably after someone else has beaten the record.
I’ve read that article thank you! And if you read it closely, you will find that no where does he say he used steroids and he only describes the products he used. I think there are lots of clear and cream substances out there and him and Greg were friends for a really long time and he kept working out with him even after that whole scandal because he has that much faith in him. And if Barry has faith then I do too!
SEVEN
HUNDRED
FIFTY
FIVE
Love Or Hate It, Time To Learn To Live With It.
(Padres’ fans tonight reacting with nothing less than total class, by the way. Tip of the hat to them. No significant hold up of the game, just enough time for him to tip the helmet.)
Yes, there shall be nothing sweeter than watcing as Bonds plants his swollen, bloated mass once again at the plate and enters eternity alongside Aaron and Mays.
I can’t wait until Monday! Not only is there a possibility he’ll hit #756, but Tim Lincecum is also pitching! Yaaaaay.
Man, you all get so excited over a number. I just don’t understand it. I mean, shouldn’t you be enjoying the games, rather than the statistics? It seems a little weird to me.
Baseball is – more than any sport – married to its statistics. To enjoy the game is to enjoy the stats, and to enjoy the stats is to enjoy the game.
[Also, bringing Barry back to squeeze one more year out of him this season was the signal to the Giants fan base that “no, we are not fielding a contending team, and in fact we are putting off rebuilding towards having a contending team for another year. This season aging Barry’s individual achievement is going to be the show we sell tickets to. This is our idea of how to best make revenue off you this season.” So since the team is going to suck and be out of contention by June (as they were), we better at least get the sideshow we were promised and have been paying for. Getting this over with is a sigh of relief in that respect; now I can finally start looking forward to 08, the team moving on and hopefully FINALLY getting young and good.]
756!!! Amaaaaziiiiiing!
Well fuck.