It’s not a crusade. It’s calling a cheat a cheat and a criminal a criminal.
I don’t see the point of all this moralizing. If there’s reason to believe that he violated league policy, let the league officials bring up evidence and make their case. If he may have broken the law, let law enforcement do its job. When he’s eligible for the Hall of Fame, put him on the ballot and let the voters decide if steroid use should keep him out.
Personally, I hate the way that dangerous drugs have pervaded sports, especially to the point where many athletes have to wreck their health to have any shot at all. I have absolutely no problem with a league making prohibitions for the good of the sport. But there has to be tight enforcement, and if it isn’t there, well, that’s just tough (a lesson driven home to me more times than I care to count). Barry Bonds understood how things really worked and what he had to do to succeed. That doesn’t make him admirable, but I’m not going to crucify him for it either.
Cite, please.
I really dislike Bonds, but all the people saying that his chase of the home run records is tainted needs to do a little reading…specifically, Ball Four, by Jim Bouton.
When Bouton was a Yankee(in the late 50s, I believe) amphetimine use was rampant in most of the major league clubhouses. I’m not sure why Bonds’ records would be tainted when most of the stars of that era were using illegal performance enhancers as well.
This is weak. What he did was illegal. Does MLB need to explicitly prohibit illegal activity? MLB rules also don’t expressly prohibit spiking the Gatorade of the opposing team with barbiturates, but that would give you a bit of an edge too. If someone did this, would we shrug and say, “Well, the rules don’t really address this. Guess it’s OK then.”
I haven’t gotten through the whole thread, so someone may have already point this out, but Jason Giambi hit a homer that put the deciding game of the LCS into extra innings, a game that the Red Sox would otherwise have won. The Yankees went on to the WS instead. So, what kind of proof do you require that steroids effect the outcome of the playoffs? How can anyone “prove” that a steroid abuser’s homerun was the result of his abuse? I dunno. Anyway, curse of the Bambino, my ass. Giambi wasn’t juiced, could well have been the Sox in the Series that year.
I don’t know how this strawman got popular, but I don’t see anyone saying if a player broke the law, “it is ok”. In fact I see those arguing that he didn’t violate any rules saying law enforcement should prosecute him if he did so. That’s far different from saying “it’s ok”.
Bouton, whose Yankee career began in 1962, also said in BALL FOUR that if baseball came up with a drug that enhanced performance but would take decades off players’ lives, they would not hesitate to use it. IOW, players need to be protected from their own zealous competitive drive, both for themselves and for the game.
This steroids era is solely the responsibility of the owners who steadily resisted having a Commissioner who could ban or suspend players virtually at will. The lure of $$$ has led them to the point where the Commissioner is an owner, and is ruled only by short-term monetary considerations and so has wrecked baseball, or at least baseball records, robbbing them of all meaning for decades to come.
Amphetamines are essentially turbo-caffeine. Come on, now. Amphetamines allowed them to party hard and still be ready to roll at game time. That’s it. Big-time apples and oranges argument.
For those that are cool with steroid use in sports: OK, fine. But let’s dispense with the frills. No bats, balls, gloves, or uniforms. Just a bunch of guys shooting up gear into each others backsides – right there at home plate. Afterwards, they can hit the Cybex machines and see which gearhead can move the most weight.
And look over there in the outfield – competing teams of labcoats working on cutting edge designer 'roids … more exciting than Iron Chef! Maybe Scooby-san could be at ground level letting us know what horse hormone they’re adding in … or just what species of whale that pituitary gland extract comes from.
No, but they do specifically ban barbiturates, and more to the point, a steroid user is only doping HIMSELF.
And that’s my point. You still have to be able to hit the ball, and how much of the cistance is attributable to steroids? Even in sprinting it’s only worth a few hundredths of a second. If anything it seems to affect recovery so you can work out harder. It doesn’t automatically make you a monster, and it doesn’t make you able to perform a skill that you couldn’t do before.
You do realize that a 162 game season is quite a grind? Fatigue will catch up to players. Amphetamines allows players to play at top shape everyday and not have a decrease in performance due to the effects of fatigue. And it wasn’t used just by the ‘party hard’ crowd. It enhanced their performance, plain and simple, and its illegal, and its widespread.
Not necessarily. Like caffeine … amphetamines work only to a point. Steroids actually have anabolic properties that amphetamines don’t.
Feel free to call it inconsistent … but stimulant use bothers me much, much less than the use of anabolic agents. I think that’s where my line is drawn … not simply at “performance enhancement”. Heck, batting practice improves performance, too … no one wants to get rid of that.
Being that amphetamine use without prescription is illegal, however, baseball should crack down on that, as well. However, “mini-thins”, Vivarin, etc. are fine by me.
Cite for what? That anabolic steroids cause erectile dysfunction, or that they increase aggressive behavior?
Apparently you missed it on the previous page, so I’ll say it again. Any and all employers are free to institute a drug policy. Many do, from cashier jobs all the way up to the US government. If you’re high or drunk on the job, you can get fired. I fail to see why baseball should be any different.
OK, substitute something else for barbiturate. Rat poison? Arsenic? The point I’m making is not whether harm is being done to oneself or to another, it’s that saying, “It wasn’t against the rules, so it’s not cheating” is a pretty narrow way of looking at things. If my anology is a weak one, I’ll bet we can come up with another in a minute: something that is illegal, provides an advantage, and is not expressly prohibited by “the rules.” How about leaking carbon dioxide (monoxide?) into the visiting team’s ventilation system. Just enough to slow 'em down.
Read the SI article if you haven’t. Statistically, it seems remote that steroids don’t provide an enormous edge. Bonds hit 37 homeruns the year McGwire broke the record, became America’s sweetheart, and enraged Bonds to the point that he decided to abuse steroids. The year Bonds hit 73–at age 36, one year beyond the age his father Bobby retired–he had never hit as many as 50 previously.
Even as his homerun output declined, this was the result of his Superman power, and pitchers refusing to give him anything to hit. For the first 13 years of his career, Bonds hit homers every 16.1 at bats. For the seven seasons that followed that period–starting when was 34 years old–he has hit a homer every 8.3 at bats. Counting just from his 73-homer year on, he has hit one every 7.7 at bats.
If you’re asking for the undeniable evidence that shows this homerun was the result of steroid abuse, but not that one–well, come on. But it’s friggin’ undeniable that Bonds has hit way more homers than he otherwise would have. It’s silly to assert otherwise, IMO. Yes, he’s a great player and was prior to steroids. That’s what happens if you take a legitimate HoF player and juice him up. He hits 73 homeruns, at a point in his career when most players see their skills begin to dminish. He wins batting titles at ages 37 and 39, the first of his career. He turns on balls that he couldn’t catch up to before, even with the prodigious skills he had pre-steroids. He wins the slugging percentage title every full season he plays since turning 36, despite the fact that he hadn’t won one prior to that since he was 28. He turns into Superman.
No, but you did see someone say that if he didn’t break an expressly stated MLB rule, then it’s not “cheating.” That’s the notion I was responding to.
How did I miss anything here? MLB decided NOT to institute a drug policy for steroids. They were free to do so, and they didn’t. Not until a few years back. If baseball wants to suspend a player for drugs and allow him to come back, they are free to do that as well, as other companies are (and have done in the past).
And I don’t see how US law applies to whether or not an athlete was ‘cheating’. If he breaks US law, let US law deal with him. If he breaks a baseball rule, let baseball’s enforcement deal with him. If he breaks the law, then he is a criminal. If he breaks a rule, then he’s a cheater. But they are two seperate things entirely.
Fine. Then I’ll assume you’re OK with the example I provided, insofar as it is addressed by MLB rules and affects the integrity of the game. Leaking carbon monoxide into the visitor’s locker room ventilation should be vigorously guarded against by law enforcement, but it’s a matter of complete indifference to MLB. After all, there’s no rule that expressly prohibits it. Let the SOBs play a little groggy. Nothing in the rules against it.
I believe baseball rules forbid attempts to injure opposing players (which is why you can be thrown out for ‘spikes high’ or throwing at opposing batters).
Maybe you’re right. Show me the rule that would prohibit what I said. I’m not aware of one.
You keep harping on this. No, baseball didn’t have a policy prior to 2002. Now they do. Why should they not go after him for using after the 2002 season forward? Because they didn’t before they had a policy? Seems a bit like a circular argument. “You can’t go after him now because you didn’t before, and you didn’t have a policy then anyway, so even though you do now, you shouldn’t.”
They haven’t caught him for using after the 2002 season. If they had, we would have known, he would have had the same penalty has Palmiero, a 10 game suspension. If they have proof that he was using after the 2002 season, they haven’t come forward with it.