I pit MLB. Why? Hypocrisy.

The BBQ Pit
1

Let’s get this part out of the way first: As for the juice-monkeys, I am against the use of steroids, make no mistake about it. I am against ANYTHING that offers a competitive advantage only to those who are willing to break the law and risk their health.

But my point is this:

  1. People want to see Bonds fall. It’s hard for people to like a guy who is better than they are, especially when he is surly about it and doesn’t do the happy publicity dance that others do.

  2. They want to get Bonds on the steroid issue, so bad that they can taste it. So they will pillory him on the basis of unproven (and ostensibly sealed) hearsay and call for his banning for even the slightest related infraction.

  3. What makes these people hypocrites is that nobody called very loudly for the revocation of Ken Caminiti’s MVP or the expunging of any of his stats. Why? Because they made Caminiti into a tragic figure, because Caminiti was liked and respected as a guy who “plays hard.”

  4. MLB has sold the longball as the defining part of the game. It is naive to assume that, at some level, baseball execs did not know what was going on. Now that the public backlash is on, they are covering their own asses, when I can all but guarantee you that, had that reporter missed seeing McGwire’s andro supplements, there would be none of this right now.

  5. The only reason the Yankees are trying to void Giambi’s contract and distance themselves from him is because he can’t play any more. If Giambi had the kind of year that Gary Sheffield did, there would be none of this “contract voiding” talk. It would be all “We support Jason in his time of personal hardship” or some shit. Mike Lupica put this much better than I could in his column yesterday, but here I am agreeing with him.

  6. And as for the people that come next, how does this help clean up the game? Giambi did what he thought was the right thing and told the truth to a grand jury, believing that the proceedings were sealed and that his candor was assured by the guarantee of secrecy. So much for that shit. If I were next on that stand, I’d give my name as Princess Anastasia of fucking Russia and tell those hypocritical assholes that I’d never even taking a fucking multivitamin. Because they can’t prove shit, but they certainly can cost me 28 million dollars. Anybody who can do any math at all will recognize that as a bad deal.
    Major League Baseball botched this whole issue. And they’re trying to take the moral high ground. Well, you can’t, MLB. You didn’t give a shit about the safety of your players when their jacked-out physiques were selling tickets. But now that those same physiques are keeping asses OUT of the seats, you’re all up in arms about “safty” and “responsibility?”

Fuck you, you fucking hypocrites. You shit the bed yourselves. Lie in your own filth until John McCain comes along with a fire hose and washes you off North-Korean-prison-style.

2

I fail to see MLB’s hypocrisy. They’ve tried to get steroid testing for a while now, but the players’ union has blocked it.

3

I realize my rant is a few decades too late, but IMO MLB committed suicide when it switched to free agency. With the revolving door that is our teams now, I am not emotionally vested enough in any of the players to even care if they’ve used steroids.
“Where have you gone, Joe diMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.”

  • Paul Simon
4

Yeah, it sucks that free agency ushered in the greatest era of competitiveness in MLB history. And how attendance is higher than it’s every been.

Damn the free agency. It killed the sport.

5

Sure, MLB has tried to get steroid testing, but it has never been as big an issue as they are making it now.

It wasn’t even as big an issue as when they believed Caminiti was an isolated incident.
And they are going to fry Caminiti and Giambi only because they HAVE to in order to have a clear path at Bonds. If they wanted to nail Caminiti on his own, they’d have done it by now.

6

Fuck ‘em. I haven’t paid any attention to baseball since the players’ strike fucked the Expos out of a pennant race.

7

MLB’s not making it an issue. The press is. That’s what happens when your best player and biggest star is found to be using steroids.

Because Caminiti wasn’t playing at the time.

Fry Caminiti and Giambi in order to get Bonds? Tell me, what exactly they are proposing. Last I heard, MLB said that neither Bonds nor Giambi is likely to be punished at all. It was the media that has talked of expunging stats and revoking MVPs…MLB had threatened nothing of the kind.

8

It’s not an isolated incident - not Caminiti, not Giambi / Sheffield / Bonds. No estimate I’ve seen says less than 25% of players are juiced, and some have gone as high as 75-80%. Victor Conte, the BALCO founder and juicer to the stars, stated on 20/20 that at least 1/2 of the MLB players are juicing, and that the Olympics are worse.

Do the owners know? Definitely implicitly, but their hands are in their ears as the Yankees and Bonds fill parks throughout the nation. Most of them are smart enough to avoid explicit knowledge of steroid use.

Quite frankly, no one should be surprised. It’s an open secret and a big game of gotcha by the holier-than-thou press, who also likely know and/or have access to a lot more details. The press (a term I use even more loosely than usual when it comes to sports writers), however, has to worry about locker access. The guy who tells the truth isn’t going to be getting any more stories, and is likely to get a hostile reaction if he’s even readmitted into a locker room.