The Chronic Curmudgeon

So how do you really feel?

Bonds is an actor, an entertainer, well before he is ever a player. For 90% of the country he is a controversial cheater who's name tarnishes the sport. For Giants fans he is the spotlight. In either case he is actually very valuable, as both love and hate bring money. But your right, the bottom line is he needs to go away. His selfish prusuit of said record is set to cause debate for Hall of Fame induction. Unfortunatly, unless he is proven beyond a reasonable doubt to have cheated, I think his records will stand. Itll just be those of us that watched eho will know the truth in 20 years.

two points on steroid use in baseball:
1) while we have proof that Barry roided up (courtesy of a federal law enforcement investigation), the fact is that he was never caught by MLB... how hypocritical would it be for MLB to ban Bonds (or withhold a spot in the HOF) for taking steroids, when (until 2005) they never had any regulations or policies to test their players for using performance enhancing drugs?
2) I've heard a lot about how today's baseball records are worthless b/c of steroids... Let's stop trashing modern day records and blaming it all on steroids... sure, some, including the very prominent (Bonds) used steroids. No argument there. But the truth of the matter is that players today are better conditioned and stronger than they were even ten years ago - without steroids.

Players today are more productive and have longer careers b/c they workout. Mike Schmidt has gone on record saying he never lifted weights. If Mike Schmidt were playing today, his production would be 20% higher than it was back in the 80s. Let's stop embracing and elevating old records and players and realize that nearly all of the new records are due to players shunning the baseball tradition of smoking in the dugout, drinking and eating to excess, and putting in honest work in the weight room and gym - and not just b/c of steroids.

Just another excuse for me to do this:

Barry *spit* Bonds. I hate that fucker.

mml-

Lets talk about Sosa instead of Bonds. This is a man who's entire career was mediocre until he started using. It (his career) was abysmal after testing began.

20% my arse. If this were the case ALL players would be doing 20% better than 15 years ago. League leading totals would run 20% higher across the board which they do not.
And what records have been re-written without the use of steroids? Name me a record broken in the last 6 years that was not accomplished by a player who was suspected of juicing.

In the same way that boy-bands are a plastic approach to music, Bonds, Sosa, McGwire, Giambi, Canseco, Palmeiro, and the rest were a plastic approach to baseball. They put on a show to make the crowd wild and increase their chances at more money.

All the kids in class could study for a test, and make themselves 20% smarter. It will not excuse the guys with the answers written on their sleeve.

I'm not a baseball stats person, but didn't Ichiro Suzuki break the single season record for hits two years ago? He may not be musclebound, but I bet his workout regimen is a lot more rigorous than the high-average hitters of the 70s and 80s.

Schmidt is an exceptional talent who did not maximize his physical capabilities through rigorous training. If he worked out, he could have easily added lbs of muscle, increased his flexibiity, and increased his bat speed. He could have added 1-3 years to his prime, and added productive years to the end of his career. Taking that into consideration, he could have easily hit 20% more homers by the end of his career. Individual season numbers would somewhat be affected by the fact that pitchers are better conditioned today, as well.

Let's be real - baseball was the last sport to see mass converts to the realities of physical conditioning. Let's not let the fact that some of today's players used steroids bring us to the point where we romantically look back at the days when excessive drinking, cigarette smoking obese players were the norm

Once bitten, twice shy.

Id like to think baseball has restored its integrity, but I fear money has simply allowed the problems to be swept under the rug and out of the spotlight. They test for steroids and HGH yes, but how many are cheating the tests as well, or bribing the testers. Im a skeptic, I know, but when I was a baseball fan as a kid, it was never about money. Now it is all that matters. What looks good on TV is all that really matters in any professional sport.

I don't recall Mike Schmidt jumping teams in the offseason to get a million more than the last. And as far as drinking and smoking ciggarettes goes, I think you'll find them just as common in the dugout now as they were when Schmitty was playing. Obesity has been saved for coaches while players snort coke in the offseason.

If your argument that baseball has progressed to something better than it was, well then I guess its a matter of opinion. For me, all the good times have been in the past, and the headlines now have become tiresome.

Not sure that all that much has changed other than the fact that it gets reported. Ty Cobb reportedly was a racist; Mantle and Martin drank excessively; Doc Ellis pitched while dropping acid; Bill Lee was an early advocate of drug testing -- he tested most of them.

As a 40-year baseball fan I don't want records enhanced by drug use. But I also don't want performance hurt by drug use either.

I'm no fan of Bonds. Can't stand him, really. I'm not rooting for him to break any more records either. But the use of performance enhancing drugs is only the latest scourge to hit the game I love. And I don't think it's necessarily the worst.

The steroids story is such a media-generated thing now (And I say this as a member). 90% of the fans didn't care last year, didn't care during the juice ball era and don't care now. I wish I could say differently, but hanging out at Tigers camp yesterday, the fans there didn't even know a damn thing about this book. It makes sense since baseball didn't care. It's funny how the sport puts the onus on the fans to right their wrongs.

Bonds is such a polarizing figure (really he's up there with Bush and Hillary) that it's more about the person than the act. If Bonds was caught with a DUI it would be "this guy is a disgrace, get him out".

Again, why should baseball kick him out? Because he's better than the other 50% of the league that tried performance-enhancing substances and got better results? (And even the "nice guys" and over 40 pitchers with "great workout regimens" dabbled in the juice). I understand he didn't need to do steroids to be a major league ballplayer, unlike..Jeremy Giambi...Hell he didn't need steroids to be considered a great MLB ballplayer like McGwire or Sosa.

But Baseball didn't test for steroids. Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, etc. weren't cheating the system...THERE WAS NO SYSTEM. Bonds and Jason Giambi is the only prominent member of the juiced ball era remaining and neither of them have failed a drug test (unlike Raffy Palmeiro, who does have the legitimate scarlet letter on him).

If I could get rid of everyone I didn't like, there'd be about 2 billion less people in the world.

You can't push the rewind button Chris. You can't erase your feelings in the 1998 chase. You were fooled like everyone else. We were all fooled by the juiced players. It's just a dark period in the sport of baseball, but everyone was entertained and the sport made a lot of money. In the end, the financial gain was worth the criticism for those who could've done something to change it.

Steroids and juiced players are forever part of baseball's history. Slap-hitting Brady Anderson really hit 50 home runs in a season. Roger Clemens really went from a 180-pound rookie to a 240-pound jelly-donut eating fat ass in 1995 to one of the most physically sound athletes I've ever seen at 43.

Well written Corey,

however didnt Jason Giambi indeed test positive last year?

Simply accepting steroid use as just part of past baseball, is like just accepting your girlfriend of 4 years is actually married to someone else. Sure it was exciting to watch, just like a magic act. When you find out just how cheesy the trick is, you lose respect for the magician.

Media hype or not, once hardened fans have the right to be frusturated.

MML - true, no policy, but the f'n things were illegal. Policy or no policy, it was *illegal* to possess or take them. Bonds. Broke. The. Law. All to cheat and to try and surpass white guys (McGwire and Ruth) he feels unworthy of more attention than himself. (And yeah, the racial issue bothers me a lot. Think that McGwire would have been given a flyer if he'd have kept playing in 2001 and said that he wanted to stay in until he passed Frank Robinson because Frank is black? Can you imagine the -- deserved!! -- uproar that would have caused, and how quickly McGwire would have been drummed out of the league? But somehow, we're all supposed to ignore bigotry and racism coming out of Bonds' mouth.)

Corey - no, I can't rewind and un-fool myself from having been caught up in McGwire/Sosa in 1998. I fell for both their acts back then. But I didn't know then what I know now. Yeah, we knew about McGwire and andro, but you could still buy it over the counter. It wasn't illegal. It wasn't a freaking women's fertility drug or Human Growth Hormone. The degrees of seriousness about what we know of McGwire and Bonds (we have FAR more details about Bonds' use, btw) is like the degree of difference between lying about a hummer and lying about being warned about how bad Katrina was going to be.

I can't rewind, you're right. But I can say "once bitten, twice shy." I can determine that, fooled once, I am never going to let a cheating athlete trick me into thinking his accomplishments are legitimate, especially when I have such detailed information about how he cheated and when. I can be sure that I don't reward cheating like I mistakenly did in 1998. It'd be like if you found out your girlfriend cheated on you, giving her another chance, finding out she's doing it *again* and doing the humpty dance with *another* guy, and saying, "well, why should I get upset this time if I already gave her a second chance after the first time?"

Does Bonds' personality play a part in it? Sure it does. No question. And it should; he's been a class 1 prick to the entire planet since the day he arrived in baseball. Does MLB deserve shame and anger for the way the entire sport turned a blind eye to what was happening, and in fact encouraging it? Sure. Absolutely. Which makes it all the more important for the game's credibility to get it right this time.

Brady Anderson's 50 HR season hasn't been legit in anyone's eyes even in the year he did it; I lived in the DC area then and all the media was talking about was what Brady must be eating or ingesting this year to change his performance. There were lots of jokes about eating his "vegetables." Clemens, while his workout routine has been legendary for a long time, it wouldn't surprise me if he'd been juicing. But I don't have detailed accounting of seven years of Clemens' progressive steroid use like I have for Bonds, thanks to these reporters. Were such detailed reports available on Clemens (and had Clemens perjured himself in front of a federal grand jury like Bonds did), my vitriol would be turned toward him too.