Jason Giambi is down, what, 40 pounds now? Intestinal parasite my ass.
If this is just an excuse for retiring, and not having to deal with all the shit that will come from breaking Aaron’s record but never getting the adulation that a sportsman would have received, that’s fine by me.
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spooje, if Bonds spit on the sports media, I would cheer.
Once again (it happens at least once every morning), I wanted to go down to Times Square and dope slap a CNN announcer. Usually, it’s Carolyn Costello or today’s target of my ire, Soledad O’Brien. While mocking Bonds press conference, she offers up this pearl of wisdom (paraphrasing), “Why doesn’t he just say ‘no comment’?” Maybe it’s because the media won’t accept a ‘no comment’, and instead will harass and harangue and never be satisfied with any answer that isn’t the answer they want? Maybe it’s because, while there are 10,000 of you asking him questions, there’s only 3 different questions, and he’s already answered them as much as he wants?
Has Barry Bonds done steroids, and has he lied about doing steroids? I think that’s over a 99% probability. But be serious, if I walk out of a bank carrying a bag with dollar signs, holding a gun, while the alarm is going off, and you ask me, “Did you rob the bank?”, do you expect an answer of “Yes”?
If the fans really cared, they wouldn’t watch any Giants games, buy any Giants tickets, nor buy any Bonds products. The fans don’t really care, nor does MLB care (except for covering its own butt).
When it comes to the sports media, I don’t like them so much myself, but it’s part of the damn job. You get paid tens of millions of dollars a year to run around a ball field, you can suck up a little bit of annoyance from the media. Treat them like shit when things are going great for you, don’t be surprised that they’ll not be on your side when things get dicey.
Ballplayers are entertainers, part of the job is to present an image to the public. Don’t want that responsibility? Join a nice softball league somewhere and get a new job.
Nitpick. The Giants haven’t played in Candlestick for five years. They have a new stadium in downtopwn Frisco called SBC Park formerly PacBell. The Niners still play at the former Candlestick. I forget what they’re calling it these days.
By the way I agree completely with what you said about Bonds. He’s a fucking prick, now a whiny fucking prick.
This “first ballot” distinction is complete bullshit, and was invented by a few sportswriters about fifteen years ago. It means absolutely nothing. JOE DIMAGGIO didn’t make it on the first ballot.
Ten years after Bonds/McGwire go into the Hall of Fame, 99% of baseball fans won’t remember if they went in on the first ballot or not, and they won’t care, either. The plaques don’t say what ballot you made it in on. Either you’re in the Hall of Fame or you aren’t. It makes no difference what ballot it’s on.
Because Mark McGwire was a much greater player. Maris was a very fine player but he was closer in value to Jesse Barfield or Bobby Bonilla than he was to Mark McGwire.
So? If the sportswriters “invented” it, and its the sportswriters who vote for the HOF inductees, shouldn’t that means something? Certainly, only in terms of “if this is something the sportswriters put value into, then it should factor in the idle speculation we’re currently engaging in” sort of way. And if it doesn’t mean anything, then why the fuss if Mac *doesn’t * make it on the first vote?
~wild applause~ Thank you. I haven’t seen Barry Bonds with the fans, but almost everytime I’ve seen him in an interview on TV he has such a nasty attitude that I end up rolling my eyes and changing the channel. I have nothing but disgust for him - I don’t care how good of a player he is.
Sadly, the rest of your speech could be made about a lot of players, reportedly including one my favorite players - Greg Maddux.
Major nitpick, bordering on button pushing: It’s San Francisco. Not Frisco. shudders. Sorry. But we hate that.
The man showed up at his press conference with his 14y.o. son, effectively stifling the possibility of the press asking any questions regarding his ex-mistress’ testimony. What a great dad you are, hiding behind your kid. Fuckin’ jerk. For someone who hates the press so much, every move you make seems planned to make chumps out of the press corps, not the other way around.
I’ve loathed him since he started with SF, this just confirmed my opinion about him.
Eddie Murray and Barry Bonds aren’t similar at all.
Eddie Murray had nothing to say to the press. Journalists weren’t happy about that, but they didn’t crucify him, either. And on the rare occasions a reporter DID have something negative to say about Eddie Murray, there were always loads of teammates who’d race forward to say “You’ve got Eddie all wrong- he’s a little hard to get to know, but once you know him, he’s a GREAT guy, really.”
NOBODY who’s played with Barry Bonds in Pittsburgh (where he regularly sobbed to manager Jim Leyland that nobody liked him, and he couldn’t understand why) or in San Francisco has come to Barry’s defense in the same way.
Why do you suppose that is?
Moreover, even if/when Eddie Murray was unhappy with something the media said about him, he just kept his mouth shut and did his job. He didn’t call press conferences to bitch and moan about how the racist press was making his children cry.
Barry- if it troubles you to see your family cry, here’s an idea: refrain from screwing hookers! That tends to make wives and kids bawl.
I will probably be disappointed, but I hope and pray that Bonds, McGwire, and all the other cheatin’ supplement users (whether they’re called ‘cream’ and ‘clear’, or ‘andro’, doesn’t matter a whole hell of a lot to me) are banned from consideration for the HoF, just like Pete Rose was.
I think that Rose’s sins were small potatoes compared to what these guys have done. Sure, we MLB fans are a little bit fetishistic about the record book, but that comes with the territory. And these guys screwed with the record book.
Maris’ name has an asterisk by it because he hit 61 in baseball’s first 162-game season. What are we going to put next to these guys’ names, a needle?
If Rose bet on his own team, that was way over the line. Why? Because as manager, he’d be tempted to try too hard to win a game he’d bet on, quite possibly to the point of weakening his team in future games. But that’s the extent of actual harm to the game. And as his tenure as manager recedes in time, the importance of those games will diminish.
But Bonds and McGwire doped their way into the record book - and for one of MLB’s most hallowed records, too: single-season HRs. (And Bonds, of course, was within reach of the equally-hallowed career HRs record.)
I’m for kicking all the steroid dopers out of baseball, and not letting them back in.
Maris never had an actual asterisk by his name - there were merely two single season home run records listed, there was the 162 game record which had Roger Maris and the 154 game record which had Babe Ruth.
Plus, you know, gambling was illegal at the time in baseball, while steroids weren’t.
Frankly, I just can’t get upset about this steroid thing. I don’t particularly care much about the recordbooks. As far as I’m concerned, dope 'em all up and let them go at it.
What I don’t understand is why baseball is such a lightning rod for this sort of thing, while the NFL, with a dozen or more steroid freaks on every team, plus battalions of murderers, pimps and drug fiends, seems totally immune. Where’s the Congressional investigation of the NFL?
It wasn’t against the rules. Now it is. If they can show someone used 'roids after April 2003 I’m all for them being punished. Barry Bonds is a jackass, oh well.
The reason there’s been no congressional investigation of the NFL is that the NFL has a steroid testing program with (at least the appearance of) teeth. Players have been regularly suspended from NFL games for drug infractions, including steroids. The MLB program, in addition to coming fifteen years too late, didn’t have jack shit in the way of consequences until Congress got involved.
Sure, I think there are NFL players who are using HGH or other designer drugs to avoid detection, but the NFL hasn’t turned a blind eye to the issue. MLB has, and in my opinion continues to.
I could not disagree more with this statement. Is the record book more important than the winner and loser of each game? Individual records are impressive, but there’s nothing more important than the team winning. Give me a choice between my favorite player shattering every offensive record in the book and my favorite team winning the world series and I’ll take the championship every time (not that it matters a whit - I’m an Orioles fan).
The other consideration is what effects the transgressions of Rose vs. juicers had on the game. Rose cast doubt on whether the outcome of a game was valid. Players who used steroids put themselves at risk to make themselves better players. There’s no question in my mind about which of these sins is greater.
I think we both know the answer to that. The NFL is run by competent people who pay very close attention to PR and their public image. Baseball, to put it mildly, is not. In fact, I would go so far as to say that baseball seems to go out of its way to court negative publicity.
“Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence.”
Selig might have a tin ear (to put it kindly) when it comes to PR, but I don’t think he’s actively trying to hurt the sport. The result is the same, though.
Doesn’t a juiced up game winning homerun cast doubt on the validity of the game? How many times has a steroid enhanced player gotten a walk so that the pitcher could pitch to a natural player?
Rose may have bet on his team to win, and may have managed differently in those games. These juicers were in there every single day with their inflated muscles changing the way the game got played. Every game, every at-bat is different, thanks to modern chemistry.
There is no doubt in my mind that the history of the game was affected far more by steroids than by Rose gambling.
IF the players are all playing under the same rules, which they were, it’s hard to doubt the integrity of the competition. Now that steroids are formally banned, their use would constitute cheating and harsh punishments are merited, in accordance with established guidelines. If Sammy Sosa gets 10 games for cheating, 10 games for cheating with roids seems appropriate, for a first offense.
The penalty for gambling has always been life. It is set in long rpecedent, it’s appropriate, and it’s perfectly in keeping with normal behaviour in other industries.
Rose may also have bet on his team to lose. Since he was betting heavily on baseball it is impossible to trust anything he says about the matter, and the only course of action is to ban him from baseball for the rest of his life.
Bonds, at least, was trying to win. Which is what we count on ballplayers to do.
Ballplayers have been taking amphetamines since Mickey Mantle was a rookie. You’re going to have to accept that “modern chemistry” will change the results. New ways of excelling will always be coming down the pipe; hell, just lifting weights is new to baseball. What matters is whether or not it’s a level playing field; now that steroids are banned, they have to be strictly banned.
The reason for that is that Rose was swiftly banned, and that there had been few gambling scandals for two generations before him because so many players were banned in the 1910s and 1920s. Baseball has been far more severe about gambling than it has been about steroids for very good reason; gambling is a much greater threat. If gambling were as commonplace as steroids, Major League Baseball would be utterly doomed.
I don’t know that anyone has seriously suggested that Rose ever, even once, bet on his team to lose. Even though gambling is forbidden, betting against your team is a far, far different thing than betting on other teams, or betting on your own team to win. I’m willing to see any evidence that people think this is part of the issue.
I’m not trying to defend the man, mind you. I just think that his gambling (assuming he never bet against his own team) had less effect on the outcome of games than steroids.
Steroids are also illegal, and have been for a while. I think taking illegal performance enhancing drugs is unacceptable whether or not the sport has its own regulation/testing program. Not to mention that the Union itself was instrumental in preventing any sort of testing program. It’s a bit circular to defend players by saying it wasn’t against the rules, when they have a big say in what those rules are.
Well, it does seem likely that the gambling of one person has less of a potential impact than the steroids taken by all the players who took them, assuming that the gambling dude never gambled on his own team. By building in the asusmption that Rose never gambled against the Reds and that we’re comparing the actions of one man against the actions of many men, you kind of win that argument by definition.
Now, imagine if SCORES of managers and players were gambling. Now what do you think?
“Impact” has nothing to do with it, anyway; if a player were to bet $5000 against his own team in a particular game and then he happened to not play in that game, the bet would have had no impact, but the rightful course of action would be to ban the player for life. Gambling carries the penalty it does because it cannot be allowed to take root. It would destroy the sport, as it almost did once.
For all the shrieking about steroids, it’s not going to destroy the sport any more than the cocaine scandals of the 1980s did. It’s sure going to fuck up some careers and reputations, but this simply does not have the same confidence-shattering impact gambling could have. Players have always been caught trying to win through rule-breaking; corked bats, spitballs, John McGraw’s habit of hooking a finger in a baserunner’s belt. Players who bend the rules attempting to win is simply not the same as an activity that calls into question whether the players are actually trying to lose.
I am not trying to dismiss this problem, but it’s just not in the same category as gambling, and people who are trying to use this angle to rehabilitate Pete Rose (or, God forbid, Joe Jackson) don’t understand why gambling’s held anathema in baseball.
It doesn’t matter if the rule was opposed by the union or not; it wasn’t a rule. Blaming the workers is the act of an incompetent businessman. Bed Selig and the owners are running this show, and they never seriously tried to ban steroids because they stupidly thought it would never become an issue. They’re in charge and so it’s their fault. Full stop.
Look, I’m not real impressed with roided up ballplayers either, and Bonds is a jackass in person. But people are suggesting he be banned for life or ineligible for the Hall of Fame for something that wasn’t against the rules. That’s preposterous. Ban him for what, exactly? Being a jackass? No rule against being a jackass. The solution here is to MAKE it against the rules (well, that was done in 2003, so that part is finished) and start testing and suspending the rulebreakers, not retroactively busting Mark McGwire’s balls.
Absolutely a true and accurate view. Though I still don’t believe McGwire would have had Hall of Fame numbers without steroids. Sorry. But you’re right - if he goes in the Hall, it will not destroy the game. Gambling has that potential.