A few interesting tidbits on Barry Bonds

[Bob_R]

For just a second, give Bonds the benefit of the doubt. But ask a few questions.

How many times have you taken something - be it a cream or pill or liquid - without knowing what it is? Do you believe your physical trainer when he tells you the clear cream is flaxseed oil or rubbing balm for arthritis? When Bonds began to hit more home runs and hit them farther than he ever had before, did he question what the substance was or did he live in blissful, willful ignorance?

For a man who has painstakingly improved his physique and seemingly taken care of his body, most people have a hard time believing Bonds didn't know he used steroids. It is not believable, even if, by remote chance, he is telling the truth.

***

The folks who should really be mad about this steroid mess, outside of baseball officials, are the Maris family, the Ruth family and Hank Aaron. Unless of course Roger Maris, Babe Ruth and Aaron took performance-enhancing substances. Since it is impossible to measure how much of an effect performance enhancers had on the recent assault on home run records, it's difficult to compare Bonds' accomplishments to Maris', Ruth's and Aaron's. Too much suspicion exists.

[Bill Lumbergh]

Shut the fuck up!

[Va Beach VH Fan]

Here we go again....

This couldn't have gone in the other Bonds thread bro ???

[Bob_R]

Originally posted by Bill Lumbergh
Shut the fuck up!

LOL!

[Bob_R]

Originally posted by Va Beach VH Fan
Here we go again....

This couldn't have gone in the other Bonds thread bro ???

Sorry dude wasn't done intentionally. Different subject matter.

[Bob_R]

More....



Bonds' feats raise red flags
By Christine Brennan USA TODAY
12/8/2004 10:39:00 PM


December may be all around us, but in this column, for the next few minutes, it's April or May 2005. Home run number 715 has just rocketed off the bat of the disgraced Barry Bonds. With it, Bonds passes Babe Ruth in the record books. In a few months, or perhaps early in 2006, Bonds will reach Hank Aaron's 755 homers. When he does, a man who said he took substances that we know to be illegal performance-enhancing drugs will be the holder of the greatest record in sports.

Some who watch him hit number 715 will cheer because it will be historic no matter how it was attained. Some will flick off the TV in disgust. Others will watch simply because it's what everyone is talking about, good or bad; a curiosity, nothing more. Half the nation watched pathetic Tonya Harding skate at the 1994 Olympics, for heaven's sake.

Sports and disgrace are longtime bedfellows. But this will be the first time in memory in U.S. sports that we will be able to watch a high-profile fraud being perpetrated on the American public and the baseball record book as it happens, day after day, week after week.

Bonds' march to the home-run record is by definition cumulative, built on a foundation that contains some parts blood, sweat and tears, and some parts chemistry experiment. It just so happens that the years of Bonds' increased might at the plate coincide almost perfectly with the years he worked with two of the most notorious names from the BALCO case, founder Victor Conte and personal trainer Greg Anderson. Bonds says he didn't know what he was taking. Even if that's true, it doesn't change what ended up in and on his body. Claims of ignorance or naivetà have never let anyone off the hook in the Olympics. I'll bet we all can agree that the East German women swimmers were cheating in the 1970s, right? Well, guess what? Many of them said years later that they thought their coaches were handing them vitamins.

Bonds' defenders also like to point out that he probably is off the juice now, so let the home run tally continue. Not so fast, says Penn State's Charles Yesalis, a noted steroids expert: "They (steroids) can assist you a decade or more after you last used them. They can take you to a place you neither have the time nor the ability to get to yourself, and if you continue with the right exercise and diet, you don't go back to zero."

Now that we know what we know about what Bonds took, every time he hits a home run, every time he admires his work before running to first base, every time he glories in the applause from the crowd, Bonds rubs it all in just a little bit more. Illegal substances will have helped him reach one of the grandest stages in all of sport, and there doesn't seem to be a darn thing anyone can do about it.

I guess Commissioner Bud Selig could suspend Bonds as if he were an Olympian caught cheating, which would send a wonderful message to children about the dangers of steroid use, but likely would be overturned by many judges in the land. Someone could get to Bonds and encourage him to retire as a gift to baseball, saving the sport from the historic nightmare it will be living in 2005 and 2006 with every swing of his bat. But that's highly unlikely; Bonds has never before shown that kind of grace.

So, it's spring 2005. Get ready for ESPN to break in live for every tainted Bonds at-bat. Get ready for the screaming newspaper headlines - "715!" - as if this were an achievement to be believed. Get ready for gushing from the seamheads.

Or maybe not. "Because of the rumors, we had discussions beginning in spring training 2004 about how to handle the news," says ESPN executive editor John Walsh. "Now with more developments, we will take a new look at what we will do next April."

Newspapers are preparing as well. "When referring to landmark home runs, we will be describing the historical significance of what Bonds has said he took," says USA TODAY deputy managing editor/sports Jim Welch.

"It's really important that sports journalists not be caught up in the phony excitement of it all," says Rem Rieder, editor of American Journalism Review. "This is baseball's greatest record, and it would make a mockery of it to treat this as a coronation. We can't ignore it when Bonds hits another home run or reaches important milestones, but there should be a big, fat asterisk next to them. For sports journalism, noting the facts about Bonds' steroid use is the moral equivalent of explaining the margin of error in every political polling story."

Steroids, asterisks, disclaimers: That's baseball in America next spring. For the time being, you are invited to return to the carefree days of December.


Updated on Wednesday, Dec 8, 2004 10:39 pm EST

[DLR7884]

You all have waaaay to many negative feelings about Barry Bonds.

DLR7884
Sad.