Look, we do not know who did what when. We do not know enough because Major League Baseball -- players, owners, the league -- did not want to know. Even if Bonds broke the law, it is highly doubtful whether or not he broke any of baseball's rules.
And don't give me this nonsense about the plausibility of Bonds growing in size as he aged. Every athlete, every guy, gets bulkier as he gets older. And the only people who argue against the possibility of gains in muscle mass as someone gets older have never spent any time in a weight room.
The most bothersome aspect of the Bonds situation is the rampant hypocrisy and the self-righteousness of it all. Barry Bonds is the greatest baseball player you have ever seen play the game. He may be unlikeable, and of course we may learn more than we now know about the steroids mess. But it is a mess to which baseball (and journalists) turned a blind eye. Post-facto hand wringing and finger waving does not change anything.
Still, the baseball card mock-up is pretty funny. Insensitive, crude, and unfair, but funny.
Hat tip to My Colleague, Chemistry Kyle.
10 comments:
You are exactly right, DCat. I am so tired of all the haters who put down baseball and Bonds, who were there cheering when Big Mac and Sammy were slugging it out several summers ago. And since I am getting out my personal gripes, I'm also tired of the baseball hating football and basketball fans (I'm not talking about the fans of all the leagues). Sure steroids is a problem in baseball, but if you honestly think that the other sports are clean then I have a bridge to sell you.
Also a second to yours and Thunderstick's arguments about soccer. Since I am a soccer fan, having played it my entire life (along with a bunch of other sports), I have simply chosen to focus my professional interests on baseball, basketball, football, and to a lesser extent hockey and soccer. I don't have time to spend on every sport I like. Besides, I prefer to play soccer a lot more than watching.
-Donnie Baseball
Professional sports is a joke anymore. If this country would devote they money and attention that they spent on this nonsense to other concerns ... well you get the picture.
Donnie Baseball --
It is amazing what baseball deals with that other sports don't. Football has a long history of practically waving its hands dismissively about steroids. How on earth does Shawne Merriman, who has been nailed with proof of steroid use, make All Pro in the same season, yet all it takes is whispering and speculation to conclude that baseball is somehow dirty.
As far as soccer goes, I am really annoyed by one phenomenon in particular right now: American sports pundits poo-pooing Beckham's injury. One guy today called it a “boo boo.” Enough. Right now LA is not playing regular season games. It had an exhibition against Chelsea, which may sound like a big deal, but from the Galaxy's vantage point? Not so much. And why waste Beckham, rush him back, now for this quasi-significant tournament against Mexican pro teams? Keep this in mind when the NFL exhibition season starts and frontline guys sit exhibition games because of, oh, ankle injuries. And the NFL is the league that is supposed to tough it out. No matter the long-term effects on its athletes. What about the NBA, where missing games for ankle injuries is likely the most common regular health occurrence in the game. It's inane, and just shows how ignorant and pathetic so many American sports journalists are.
Special Agent CD--
I don't buy the naysaying. There are lots of unsavory elements of modern sports. I am sickened by the Michael Vick allegations. Sure, the drug aspect is frustrating (but so is the concomitant sanctimony). Lots of athletes are thugs, though we happen to learn about their thuggery and dissolution in a way that we don't learn about mine, or for that matter yours. There never was a golden age of sport. Never. Name a decade and I'll deconstruct it to its most unsavory aspects. Our era is no worse than any other, that's for sure.
dcat
I've never understood the argument that because Big Mac and Sammy didn't undergo the same scrutiny as Bonds that it somehow excuses Bonds doing steroids. And I've really never understood the argument that it was OK because even though it was illegal, it wasn't banned by the rules of baseball. That's a technicality. If you have to break the law to gain a competitive advantage, then it's something you shouldn't be doing. That's just common sense. I don't see how just because MLB turned a blind eye to it, that excuses criminal behavior.
When I was in high school, I came in second in the 400 meters as a junior in the state championships and coming into my senior year I was by far the best returning 400 meter guy in the state and I wanted more than anything to win the state title. But a kid who was in my class at a high school across town came back from the summer jacked like you wouldn't believe. Everyone knew that steroids were an issue at this school across town and in fact a couple years later some people were arrested for possessing them that had gone to that school. And everyone said this kid was on them. People I know on his team told me that they saw him taking them and knew where he was getting them from. But it wasn't in the state of NH athletic rules in 1991 and 1992 that performance enhancing drugs were illegal and the state of NH didn't test for them (such problems were not even being considered in NH high school athletics at the time) and the school that he went to knowing there was a problem with this, never really lifted a finger to investigate to see if anything was going on because they didn't want the negative press. And come state championship time, that kid beat me by three tenths of a second for the state title. I'm not willing to say "well, it technically wasn't illegal under New Hampshire athletic rules and other people were doing it and the school was just as complicit because they knew these things were going on and they didn't look into it, so kudos to him for beating me for the state title!! He deserved it!!" What he did was wrong and it'll never sit well that all the hours and work that I put in over 4 years in high school to win that one race was taken from me because this guy was willing to break the law to make himself a better runner and I wasn't. And to project that to Bonds (and everyone else that is doing steroids in every sport), these guys are taking jobs and money away from those players that aren't willing to break the law so they can perform at a higher level. The circumstances that led to this are in no way limited to just the players--as has been pointed out, MLB (and other sports leagues) hid their head in the sand, the press didn't print it because it wasn't as sexy as the other stories that were going and the fans ate it up and paid big money to watch these guys. But that doesn't mean we should excuse the guy that made the conscious decision to break the law for fame and glory just because other people did some things they shouldn't have.
400 M dash, my stomach turns just thinking about that event, by far one of the most challenging events in all of sports. The only thing I kept repeating to myself before the gun went off was, "At least this will be over in a little less than a minute."
If the runner you are referring to was from a Class M school, I remember him. Does the name Tungi Owogobi ring a bell? Went to one of the Manchester schools, great 100 M runner then played hoops at B.U. I was in the lane next to him at the Meet of Champions in '92, never felt so inadequate in my entire life. Thankfully marriage has helped me erase that memory.
Wasn't him or that school--wasn't he in 93 or 94? He went to Trinity--I went to school cross town at West and he wasn't at Trinity the entire time I was at west--I think he just showed up for his senior year there. I was in the 100 in the Meet of Champions in 92 as well and I'm certain he wasn't in that race.
I think my comment may have been confusing- Tungi was certainly NOT on any type of performance enhancing drugs, just a pure freak of nature as we say with incredible natural talent. And yes, Tungo was 93 and 94.
So do you know any of the guys at West that played hoops or football? My favorite crowd at a summer program I went to in the summer of '93 were the guys from West, DCAT will back me up on this. Just a pure joy to hang out with. Then I was introduced to you through this blog and it all went to hell.
The guy I'm thinking off was at a Class M school and I was sure he won at the Meet of Champions a couple years in the early 90s - 100, 200 and 400 I believe. Went on to compete at Northeastern.
First off, how lucky are we that we grew up in New Hampshire? I won three Class M titles, went to the Meet of Champions and New Englands in multiple events in multiple years, and got to be a star in a small firmament. All three of us saw state-level success in track. Indeed, all of us had multi-sport success. Had we grown up in Texas, we'd be reminiscing about Districts or something like that.
Second -- Thunderstick, while I am not condoning performance enhancing drugs in any way, I don't see how it is irrelevant that MLB did not have policies or a testing program in place. We are talking about "cheating" and yet baseball did not bother even to legislate, never mind police and execute, this scourge. And so what we have is post facto information. Everyone loves to post pics of Bonds from his rookie year to his dotage. And he got bigger. Well, so what? Guys get big. Especially power guys. Especially guys who came of age in the late 80s and early 90s when weightlifting was nowhere near as pronounced as it is now.
And the problem is that without evidence, or with circuitous evidence, how can we single out certain guys. Tom has always made a great point -- look at Jim Thome his rookie year and now. Huge changes. Or what about a guy whose name never comes up in these discussions -- I'm going to check one of these days a rookie picture of Cal Ripken Jr. and a picture of his around 95-99. After all, steroids help as least as much with recovery time as with pure size. I do not have any idea if Ripken did anything untoward, I highly doubt that he did. But if we are going to use these ephemeral standards, everyone needs to be fair game.
Furthermore, why do some guys get off the hook? We always hear it -- well, Griffey has never been accused, or ARod has never been accused . . . well how arbitrary is that? When no one is tested, how can only some guys be suspect? Again, I have no reason to believe any of these guys did anything, but why the arbitrariness?
And of course now we discover that more pitchers have so far been caught since testing has been in place than batters. And yet the conventional wisdon was that pitchers would not benefit. So how many of the guys throwing to Bonds were on the juice? And if the conventional wisdom was so wrong for so long, why do we assume that now sportswriters and others who establish that wisdom have managed to extract their heads from their derreires?
Finally, the point about criminality as opposed to being outlawed in baseball is a bigger deal than Thunderstick is making it out to be, because if it is baseball's law to adjust the record books not based on rules baseball could not be bothered to enact but rather because of post facto outrage, why pick on Bonds and not Babe Ruth, who we know brought women across state lines for illegal purposes, who patronized hookers, and who violated Prohibition at every turn?
The person I feel worst for is Hank Aaron, but again, that assumes that Barry violated something, and since baseball could not be bothered, what is that something?
Finally, it has always been said that a prosecutor could get a Grand Jury to indict a ham sandwich. Indictments are not hard to get. Yet how many times have they had to renew the Grand Jury for Barry Bonds over the last 2, 3, 4 years? It's all so obvious what Bonds did or did not do to everyone but those who apparently are finding the ham sandwich tough to handle. Peculiar.
That said, of course it would suck to have lost potential state titles to someone everyone believed to be on the juice. And yeah, the ManWest guys are pretty cool.
dcat
dcat--here's my problem with the argument concerning criminality. Babe Ruth may have broke the law, but he didn't affect any other players in doing it. Guys taking steroids in baseball are breaking the law to perform better and it hurts the guys that aren't willing to break the law. Simply put, nobody should be forced to decide whether they are going to break the law or not to earn a living. So to me, those guys can't hide behind the "it wasn't against the rules of baseball". They don't get off on the technicality that the powers that be weren't proactive enough or strong enough to put that legislation in and test for it. I'm sure every MLB player faced that moment where they said "I can perform better and make more money if I break the law" and some decided to go through with it and some decided not to and the guys that did are taking money right out of the pockets of the guys that didn't.
Let's say you were up for the department head at UTPB and were competing against some other guy for the position. Say you are the most qualified candidate but that guy broke the law, but didn't break any specific UTPB rule, that resulted in him getting the position over you. And say he gets immunity from prosecution because he turns on someone and provides info about others and is thus never tried and let go. Does he still have a right to be department head? Are you telling me that you'd say "well he didn't break a UTPB rule to get the position, so kudos to him. He earned it"?
Thunderstick --
Look, the UTPB analogy does not work, because there is no real point of comparison.
But the larger argument is still valid inasmuch as on a regular basis people who acknowledge the not insignificant fact that Bonds has never tested positive for steroids still point out that it was illegal. look -- the law is the law and the rules of sport are the rules of sport. If someone is found guilty of something in the legal system, by al means, baseball can act. If someone is found guilty of violating a rule in a sport, by all means, punish him. But this idea of focusing on Bonds above all is absurd. baseball did not have the rule they are accusing him of violating and that people want to punish him for within the framework of baseball. We cannot erase his records (if we do, what do we do about all of the ripple effect stats -- his hits? His walks? The strikeouts pitchers hung on him?) and we have no evidence that should allow us to do so.
It's simple: Baseball did not have the rules in place to catch Bonds if he used performance enhancing drugs. It's the fault of everyone affiliated with baseball that we are in the mess, but the witch hunt does us no good.
dcat
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