Ben Johnson ran the fastest 100m ever. That is a fact. It is not a record, however. FWIW.
Right. So it seems to me that his “decision” not to punish Giambi is meaningless. No one has ever been punished for said offense. Even conceding that it was a technical rules violation, there was no procedure in place for detection, hence, the threat of punishment was moot. And, as you mention, the union would fight tooth and nail against such a punishment. Furthermore, Selig has said that his pressure on Giambi to testify was a one time thing, and that he would not do so with anyone else. How could he in good conscience punish him? I don’t see it as admitting that steroid use is OK. I see it as being practical, and setting the stage for proscription of steroid use down the road.
Well, it’s not even the fastest 100m anymore, anyway.
The problem with comparing Johnson to Bonds is that Johnson’s performance can be disqualified unilaterally from the record. Bonds’s cannot; you can’t pretend the home runs didn’t happen because you can’t remove them from the record of the games they occurred in.
Of course, really, Ben Johnson DID hold the world record anyway, in a sense; the Olympics are corrupted to an extent baseball coiuldn’t touch in a zillion years, so Olympics records mean nothing at all, really. Michelle Smith hasn’t given her medals back.
I’m not so sure. You can certainly add a home run to a game. Cite.
I’m confused. Is it a record, or not? Is a meaningless record a record?
Whether or not Michell Smith has given her medals back (I don’t know who she is) is she still recognized by the Olympic Committee as an Olympic champion? They are the arbiters of what is or is not an Olympic record. As to who holds the world record, who’s to say? According to your logic, it could be anyone. All you have to do is run the fastest. No one would even have to witness it. There is a reason that standards for records are agreed upon.
Records are maintained and recognized by sanctioning bodies. Ben Johnson may have been the world’s fastest human for a period of time. However, it is indisputable that he once held an Olympic record, and then was stripped of it.
I suppose that my point is that the *record *needs to be distinguished from the act.
You betcha, despite the fact that she did more steroids than a whole stable of Barry Bondses.
I mean, this is a sporting event where entire nations cheated, where judges were paid to throw events, where men were sent to compete as women.
Well why make the point that she has not returned her medals. Was she asked to?
Years after testing has been in place, Bonds, a broken down old man, is hitting more home runs than Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz. Not quite what you would expect if Bonds was the one juicing.
If Ramirez and Ortiz are among the majority of MLB players who doped, should the Red Sox forfeit their World Series win?
Considering that one benefit of steroids is faster recovery, isn’t that exactly what you would expect if Bonds was juicing?
I have a totally different take on this, though I can sympathize with the OP.
I think people in the future will have no problem at all with these records. They will say things about Ruth and Aaron like, “They did really well for athletes who didn’t have the benefit of modern sports medicine.”
Let’s face it, mainstream American is becoming a drug-enhanced society. Students and executives are already taking memory pills (I’ve no idea if they really work or not, but sooner or later they will), older guys are taking boner pills, women are taking sex drive pills, etc. There are pills for all kind of things that we just used to live with untreated as annoyances, and are now defined as problems that need treatment. Sooner or later the pills will be supplemented by gene therapy, and it’s a very small step from fixing a problem to making something better than it was before the problem arose.
I won’t be surprised if Bonds, Giambi, et al, are eventually seen as “pioneers”.
Why can’t you? Why couldn’t the Commissioner establish that all stats produced by a player determined to have taken steroids or HGH at any point in his career are invalid as records? Any game where a player–regardless of the player’s contribution in that game–took steroids or HGH is a forfeit to the other team. Protests in that regard must take place within two weeks of the game.
All sports records are the algebra of arbitrary rules. Let’s not pretend otherwise. There are certainly rules that could deal with these abuses, and I’m A-okay with the Commissioner establishing these suggestions of mine, free of charge. Everyone will be free to assess the real value of these “factual” occurrences, these Herculean miracles, as they see fit–just as they always could–but baseball would still shit-can them as records for the abortions they are, whether Barry likes it or not.