Couldn’t happen to a nicer fellow. Say goodbye to the Hall of Fame, ya cheatin’ bastid.
I just wish he’d retire. I can’t find it in me to root for him anymore.
“I am shocked! Shocked to find gambling going on in here!”
Does happy dance
I cannot stand that fat, loud mouthed, egotistical waste of salary. Time to get rid of him and get a decent outfield. With the money he ties up every year, I figure we could even get a starting pitcher.
You know he was a Hall of Famer before he started doping, right?
Your point?
Pete Rose was a Hall of Famer before the whole betting on baseball thing too.
Yup. I just find the enmity a little ugly, that’s all.
And, y’know, if it were any other player I probably would too. But Barry Bonds has been a jerk of major proportions. He smacked his wife around, tried to avoid paying child support, smacked his girlfriend around, took his son to interviews with him to avoid being asked tough questions (one reporter called it a stroke of genius), didn’t tell Alou that he’d be missing the majority of the season til the very last second; in fact, Alou heard it from his wife, who heard through the media, has a history of problems with his teammates… it goes on and on.
Maureen forgot to mention that he played the race card often when things got sticky for him. That’s the worst of all, worse than the 'roids in my opinion. I’m glad that that fucker is going down and me being a third generation Dodger fan (my Dad was born in Brooklyn) has nothing, well not much, to do with it.
I’ve pretty much decided that he did it. I’ve also pretty much decided that I don’t care. If he wants to shorten his life for some monster stats now, more power to him. He’s an adult, and he got an edge. Big deal. The Babe got an edge when they juiced the ball and banned the spitball in 1920, and when he moved into chip-shot Yankee Stadium with its 296 foot right field fence. Bob Gibson got an edge when they changed the strike zone in the 1960s. Everyone gets an edge until its taken away.
What’s more important than all this steroid nonsense is that he still managed to play baseball at a high level. He assumed risks to do so, that’s his prerogative. I’ll tell you this, though: you can give me all the juice in the world, you can literally pour it down my throat, you can make me 275 pounds of solid muscle, and I will never, ever be able to hit a baseball. That’s the bottom line. He has the skill, juice or not.
Incidentally, “the integrity of the game” is nonexistent. It never has existed. Pete Rose is simply the most egregious example of shenanigans. People like to compare stats, like that is the Holy Grail of baseball. It’s not. The stats are more a reflection of where you played, when you played, and how you played. You can’t seriously tell me that Mel Ott, playing in the 480 foot dead center Polo Grounds for his entire career, didn’t lose a considerable amount of dingers. 144 of them? Maybe, maybe not. We’ll never know. The numbers are neat, but they’re phony. And I know them anyway. Gambling? Happens every day. Groundskeeper cheating? All the time. Equipment fraud? Yeah, like Gaylord Perry, Graig Nettles, Joe Niekro, Sammy Sosa, and Kevin Gross are the only cheaters. Please.
Bonds is continuing on in the long and noble tradition of getting away with whatever he can to win. He should be admired, not reviled, especially because he’s only hurting himself to do it.
It’s old news, really, although if people continue to insist he didn’t do it, it’s nice to have a book that’s basically a large cite.
Do you feel the same way about Olympic athletes? College? I’m not a huge baseball fan, certainly I think Pete Rose should be in the HOF, and I don’t hold much with the “integrity of the sport”; baseball lost all its integrity IMO after the strike. But I do think that steroid use in professional sports encourages use in other areas. Steroids are banned substances in baseball not only because they enhance performance, but also because they are dangerous. Athletes who use them pose a risk to themselves and the people around them.
I do feel the same way about other athletes. I think to this day that Ben Johnson got jobbed. He ran the fastest time ever. Period. And steroids in sports encourages use in other areas? So does pot, and I’m not sure if you’re one of them but people stump for that all the time. So does booze. Big deal. I’m not Barry Bonds’ nanny, and as a big boy he can make his own decisions as long as he can live with the consequences.
Again, I don’t want to live in a nanny state. How are they dangerous to people around users? The only fatality was in 1920, Herb Score and Tony C were 40 and 50 years ago, and Jason Kendall wasn’t steroid related. Those are the worst injuries I can think of on the playing field. If you’re referring to the typical gross buffoonery of today’s athletes, steroids have nothing to do with that. See Mitchell, Kevin, Saberhagen, Bret, Dibble, Rob, Mantle, Mickey, Ruth, “Babe”… need I say more?
The only argument is for the “integrity” of the game, and if you accept that that doesn’t exist anymore the whole argument falls apart. And it doesn’t exist anymore. If it ever did.
Anabolic steroids cause the user to become extremely aggressive. That aggression comes out in more ways then just the playing field. Yes, other drugs do that, too. Other drugs are illegal too, aren’t they? Not to mention the self inflicted damage that steroid use causes, but as you said, if a player doesn’t care what he does to his body, why should we?
But they also lowered the mound just because he was so good. Cite.
Is BB an ass? Sure.
Maybe I should open a GD, but I would like to ask the question of whether it is cheating or not to use performance enhancing drugs and not get into the moral implications or any roll model arguments.
If a type of exercise is found to enhance the specific performance issues of a particular sport, it is looked at as simply another form of training. Yet, even this can be dangerous to the body in the long run. However, no one ever says a good strength coach for a NFL offensive line is cheating. And no one says (with any success anyways) that being able to afford to pay a whole team of stars is cheating (Marlins, Yankees). They just lobby for salary caps and whot not. And I don’t recall anything ever being done about the winning records of soviet block atheletes who were 100% immersed in their respective sports while being state funded (or were we all wrong about that?).
Since performance enhancers are readily available to anyone with the money and foolish enough to take them, should they be labled as cheating?
I am still undecided. Yes, they are bad for the person, but since any one else may make the descision to take them, are they really an unfair advantage? All you need is money and the desire. Just about anyone can get to them if they want to bad enough.
A sport wide ban on the drugs (specific or general) makes that question a little more difficult, I know. But were PEs even banned in MLB before this decade? And also note, I’m not saying Barry did it or not. I care not. But the “cheating” word brings up some questions I think.
I forgot to mention; these guys aren’t just playing a friendly game in the back yard, passing around a doob and having a couple beers. They’re professional athletes; this is their job. I don’t know about you, but I’m not allowed to come to work drunk or stoned. Actually, I DO know about you; I was in the military, too. You get random tested every once in a while for illegal drugs. Being drunk on the job will land you in trouble. For that matter, driving drunk or stoned is illegal, too. Why should this profession be different than any other?
Don’t want to live in a nanny state? Denmark’s nice this time of year…
It wasn’t cheating as far as baseball was concerned, at least until last year. Oddly enough, Bonds didn’t play much last year, and seemed to take an extraordinarily long time to recover from his injuries. Hmmmm.