Do I believe Barry Bonds used steroids? With a 99.9% certainty. Depending on whose tell-all you believe so did between 25% and 75%+ of all Major Leaguers. And it continues to happen, in every competitive sport, despite all the testing.
I don’t condone it (as if my say has any schwing), but I’m not going to witchhunt a handful of players for what is a much more widespread issue. Sadly, it is not going to go away, so this War on Steroids is as likely to be as successful as the War on Drugs.
If Barry is smart (and healthy enough to play and thus always be in the interviewers line of fire), he will refuse to answer any questions regarding the new book. He is absolutely under no obligation to do so. If it were me, I’d make an early blanket statement that not only will I not answer any question regarding the subject, but that reporter would go on my shit-list and would have none of his questions ever answered.
But I’m a big enough asshole that I could teach Barry a thing or two.
Why was Ben Johnson robbed? Whether or not you agree with the rule, he broke it. It wasn’t like he broke some esoteric rule that no one really knows about. DO NOT DO STEROIDS is probably the first rule of his sport.
I think we just disagree on whether or not it is legitimate for a sport to all but require its athletes to juice to compete. While I tend to agree that we don’t need a nanny state, the truth is lots of sports have lots of rules to protect the athletes. Football has the no helmet to helmet rule, baseball has a rule against throwing at the batter and so on and so forth.
If you don’t like the “no steroid” rule because you think people shouldn’t be nannied, how do you feel about it in terms of owners using it to maximize profit?
In the end, the owners make the rules of the game in such a way as to maximize revenue. If they think making steroids against the rules will increase (or at least keep from decreasing) revenue, then they should make the rule. Sure, they can bluster on and on about how it is for the good of the game or to protect players, but in the end it really is just about money. Sometimes the rules are made to protect the investment (QBs can hook slide and can’t be hit) and sometimes they are made to enhance the image of the game, but it still boils down to money.
Personally, I think this is a good rule because not having it will all but force all players to juice. But the owners are free to make whatever rules they want, and I’m free to watch or not watch. (I personally don’t support baseball for other reasons).
The man ran a 9.79. Juiced? Sure. But he ran a friggin’ 9.79! He dusted everybody in that race and hey, guess what? They were (allegedly) on the juice too. They all got nailed at one time or another, although the golden boy Carl Lewis never paid any penalty for it.
Carl Lewis should be penalized because at another time he tested positive? That just doesn’t compute.
If a player cheats and gets caught, I have a really difficult time understanding how ANYONE can say he was robbed. Unless, of course, the other players also cheated and were also caught and not punished in that event. You shouldn’t punish someone if you can’t prove they cheated.
Your argument that Ben Johnson was robbed is to admit that he was cheating but that is okay because everyone was cheating. Despite the fact that there isn’t any proof they were cheating at that event.
OK, let me spell it out for you: Carl Lewis tested positive during the 1988 Olympic Trials. If he was juiced there he was juiced in the Olympics because the Trials are very shortly before the Olympics. He (allegedly) cheated to get in, and that cheat doesn’t wear off in a few weeks. He never should have been there, but he got the Gold when Ben Johnson beat him at his own game but got caught.
Does that compute? It should. Juicing is so common that if you go down the list of record-holding athletes from the early 80s on you’ll find that most of them have been alleged users in the same way Barry Bonds has been alleged to use steroids, and some have actually been nailed for it. 'Roids are nearly ubiquitous, but you still want to argue about fairness in sports? Give me a break. This is just the latest evolution in cheating that goes back since the beginning of sporting events. It’s NEVER been fair. Why, then, is there this big morality movement to clean up the games now, especially from people as liberal as the members of the SDMB?
I find this whole controversy amusing. I am the most liberal person around on this topic? When did I enter Fantasyland? This is almost surreal.
I suppose Doors has some points with regard to Bonds being allowed to make his choices (aside from repeatedly violating the law and lying about it). My concern is that it doesn’t just set an example, but puts substantial pressure on athletes at lower levels of competition. Here I’m particularly worried about athletes at the high school and college level who might be encouraged to cheat to get a shot at the big payday.
I don’t think that every athlete should be forced to make the choice to potentially destroy themselves just so they can compete with their more reckless colleagues.
I’m not seeing where anyone is saying that the '80s and '90s era track and field guys are getting a pass on the 'roids. Yeah, most of them have been abusing it (or other perfromance enhancers) for a long time. Many have taken a fall in this whole BALCO thing. Are you seriously trying imply that this argues in favor of Bonds? You must be joking.
Cheating has been going on since the dawn of sport. That’s true. Most of it has involved the breaking of arbitrary rules. The ban on spit-balling is an arbitrary rule designed to make the game more interesting for the fans. Same with corked bats. I’m willing to accept that breaking these rules amounts to gamesmanship and it’s fine so long as you don’t get caught. Those rules aren’t vastly different than the balk rule or the pass interference and holding rules in the NFL.
Using steroids is not simply a player breaking a arbitrary rule however. Any comparison to those examples is totally foolish. If steroids weren’t harmful, then perhaps you could make that comparison. Considering that they are dangerous to a players health that makes them fundamentally different.
Allowing players to juice is likely to be bad for business, and that’s all the reason the owners need to ban it.
The libertarian principles essentially state that a person should be able to do whatever they want with their own body so long as ti doesn’t harm others. In most cases I agree with that. Steroids however are not an individual rights issue wthin the context of an organized sport. The competitive nature compels everyone else involved to use them. That is in conflict with the “liberal” argument.
I know. What a heartbreak it must be that you don’t get to make obscene amounts of money for playing a kid’s game because you decide that your health is more important.
You act like people deserve to play sports professionally.
You know, this whole argument is based on the premise that because certain baseball players take steroids others have to or they won’t be able to play baseball. In other words, juicers are taking positions that other people should have because they are playing without steroids.
That said, I ask you: can you name anybody who has been held back from the pros because a juicer is taking up a roster spot in Major Leauge Baseball? Anyone at all? For that matter, has a team won a World Series because their star was on the sauce? Since baseball by its very nature consists of individual accomplishments making up the team as a whole, has any one individual on the juice made a substantial difference to the results of the team? I don’t think so. Case in point: how many rings does Barry Bonds have?
The impact of steroids is tremendously overstated in my opinion. It gives an individual an edge, but that individual is generally already a great player, and it doesn’t seem to help the team as a whole.
Airman - The only one between the two of us who is arguing about fairness is you. I never claimed anything about sports being fair. I said I didn’t think it was right (not the same as fair) to essentially force athletes to juice up. I said the owners aren’t making these rules for anything more grandious than their own pockets.
You were the one that claimed Ben Johnson was robbed.
Johnson got caught. Lewis didn’t. By your own sentiment, Johnson took a chance and paid the price. Lewis took the same chance and succeeded. Seems like in your book you should be cheering Lewis on, not bellyaching about how Johnson got robbed. You are claiming that people get to make these choices and they should live with the consequences.
Here is the rule: Test positive for steroids and you’ll get stripped of your medals. How is that robbing anyone of anything?
Given that baseball has had steroid testing for only a couple of years, the questions are unanswerable in the affirmative or in the negative.
McGwire and Canseco each won one, if you believe they used it. Beyond that, this question is also guesswork.
Sammy Sosa hit 60 home runs three times and once drove in 160 runs. He never won a Series, but I think those achievements helped his team. And Bonds hit eight home runs in the 2002 post season, I think that helped his team reach the Series a little bit. And of course, the big homers helped draw fans to see him, which is why baseball overlooked this problem for so many years.
You’re correct that the impact of steroids on baseball is in many ways impossible to measure. There’s no way to say for sure that a fly ball became a home run because of steroids, no way to quantify how much a guy’s batting average increased just because his eyesight and strength improved and he was able to train more and recover faster from injuries.
As far as the “that individual is already a great player” argument, that’s also speculative. The players who were caught using steroids last year, with the possible exception of Rafael Palmeiro, were not great.
Fair enough. I said that Johnson got jobbed in response to something Maureen said, you ran with it, and we got off on this weird tangent. Some people are arguing public health, some people are arguing fairness, some people are just hating on Bonds because (I guess) he’s an ass, you’re arguing the rules (which is itself a tangent of the fairness argument) and I’m here all by myself. It’s not like this is the first time that’s happened, eh?
Dur. Of course, the factual answer is that Bonds has zero. I meant that in the broader sense of juiced players, especially stars, winning the Series, it’s unanswerable.
Interesting that you would say that, because with…er, 45*32…1,440 roster spots in MLB out of the many millions that play professionally I would say that they are all great. Argumentative, but true. That said, there are players that can barely clear the Mendoza line and others that can’t catch a cold. If the players in the minors can’t beat those players out for a roster spot I submit that juicing players aren’t holding anybody back.
Kid’s game? What makes you define it as that? I don’t think anybody else thinks of it that way. Is boxing then a kid’s game? Any other sport people pursue as a career?
And yeah, people do deserve to play sports professionally. Sport is a constant in any human culture. If people are willing to pay salaries by watching it, then someone deserves to make a career out of it. We don’t, however, have the right to demand that someone wreck their health for it…which is exactly what we do if we allow steroid use.
It depends on your definition of “great,” of course, and I should’ve said something to that effect. A player who is only able to get to the AA or AAA level in the minors - surely “great” compared to the total set of baseball players - doesn’t get the cash bonanza that a player in the majors gets. And with the amount of competition, the difference between succeeding at those levels and making it as a marginal, but much wealthier, major league player must get pretty slim at times. Thus one more encouragement to use steroids or HGH.