Era of Bonds isn't noteworthy

[The Voice of Reason]

Couldn't agree with Christine more. Eventually, Bonds passing Aaron will be looked at the same way people currently view the records "broken" by Ben Johnson and the East Germans swimmers of the 70s and 80s.

 

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/brennan/2007-08-08-column-bonds_N.htm

 

Our long national nightmare is over. Barry Bonds, the San Francisco Giants and their sycophantic fans can now stop demanding our attention like restless children and slink back to the oblivion of last place. The rest of us can resume our normal lives, content in the knowledge that a vast majority of Americans reacted to what happened late Tuesday night exactly the way the situation demanded: by sleeping through it.

 

We should watch home runs fly off the bat of a man who once was a skinny speedster, made bigger and bigger by, well, by something — perhaps it all was just good old hard work, Barry Bonds-style.

 

That's what Bonds would tell you; pay no attention to that grand jury testimony, as reported in the San Francisco Chronicle, in which he said he took substances that we know to be performance-enhancing drugs. A guy's home run production can double, sometimes almost triple, after he turns 35. Sure, why not? So baseball wasn't doing any steroid testing during the years in which Bonds' home run numbers rocketed. Coincidences do happen.

 

What will those future sports fans think of us — not just San Franciscans, but all of us, the baseball media, too — decades from now? Won't they look at the replays of Bonds' 756th home run and ask how everyone, how anyone, could be so ecstatic knowing our own era's steroid history?

 

How the East Germans stole Olympic medals throughout the 1970s and into the 1980s by giving mounds of steroids to their teenage girl swimmers and track stars? How Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson passed drug test after drug test, successfully getting on, then off, the juice, before finally getting caught at the 1988 Olympic Games after winning the 100-meter dash?

 

Didn't baseball fans remember that? Was it so important to escape the real world for three hours that people checked their sensibility at the turnstile? Didn't they know that to not fail a drug test didn't mean you're not taking performance-enhancing drugs? Didn't they realize that the bad chemists were way ahead of the good chemists, in both 1988 and 2007?

 

But, won't union chief Don Fehr go down as the greatest villain of all, sacrificing the integrity of a sport and the future health of his rank-and-file — though few yet talk about what steroids will do to these men in 10-15 years — for the ego-boost of beating the owners again and again?

 

Fans 20, 30, even 40 years into the future, those who will know more about our Steroid Era than we know today as the Bonds investigations continue to unfold, will look at the images out of that ballpark by the bay and wonder what we as a sports culture could possibly have been thinking.

 

It would be nice if we could let them know that many of us today are asking the exact same question.

[ctcf]

Nicely put.

[Post Count Padder]

Well said

[OleMissCub]

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/brennan/2007-08-08-column-bonds_N.htm

 

Our long national nightmare is over.

 

He stole my line!!! :-(

[SouthSideRyan]

This implies that baseball players in the future/track stars of the present aren't/won't be on PEDs.

[The Voice of Reason]

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/brennan/2007-08-08-column-bonds_N.htm

 

Our long national nightmare is over.

 

He stole my line!!! :-(

 

Only fair since you stole it from Gerald Ford.

Edited August 9, 2007 by The Voice of Reason

[Soul]

This implies that baseball players in the future/track stars of the present aren't/won't be on PEDs.

 

Sort of, but HR production is down after all, quite a bit if I'm remembering the numbers I saw a little while ago correctly.

 

I think if the stats start bloating out of control again it'll be the same thing all over again, or if it's in another sport, same difference. It always starts with people looking at records falling left & right and going, "hey what's going on here?!?" .... Right? So since the numbers have kind of un-bloated themselves, people are thinking the steroid flap is over for the moment.

[The Voice of Reason]

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/columnist/brennan/2007-08-08-column-bonds_N.htm

 

Our long national nightmare is over.

 

He stole my line!!! :-(

 

Only fair since you stole it from Gerald Ford.

[fromthestretch]

This implies that baseball players in the future/track stars of the present aren't/won't be on PEDs.

 

Doesn't it also kind of ignore the fact that other cheating has gone on throughout the history of the game? People have been taking greenies for a long time. Spitballs, corked bats, scuffed balls, etc....have been going on for several generations. I'm not saying any of that excuses what's gone on with steroids/PEDs, but a lot of those other forms of cheating never seem to be met with this kind of anger.

 

Cheating will continue to evolve in all sports. The key is whether the governing authorities for those sports can manage to not ignore it for a couple decades when something new comes along.

[Cynosure]

An article that makes sense, NIIIICE.

[Soul]

This implies that baseball players in the future/track stars of the present aren't/won't be on PEDs.

 

Doesn't it also kind of ignore the fact that other cheating has gone on throughout the history of the game? People have been taking greenies for a long time. Spitballs, corked bats, scuffed balls, etc....have been going on for several generations. I'm not saying any of that excuses what's gone on with steroids/PEDs, but a lot of those other forms of cheating never seem to be met with this kind of anger.

 

Cheating will continue to evolve in all sports. The key is whether the governing authorities for those sports can manage to not ignore it for a couple decades when something new comes along.

 

Sure. And especially when your sport is growing, more people are turning out, etc. Harder to convince people something's wrong when it feels oh so right.

[The Voice of Reason]

This implies that baseball players in the future/track stars of the present aren't/won't be on PEDs.

 

Doesn't it also kind of ignore the fact that other cheating has gone on throughout the history of the game? People have been taking greenies for a long time. Spitballs, corked bats, scuffed balls, etc....have been going on for several generations. I'm not saying any of that excuses what's gone on with steroids/PEDs, but a lot of those other forms of cheating never seem to be met with this kind of anger.

 

Cheating will continue to evolve in all sports. The key is whether the governing authorities for those sports can manage to not ignore it for a couple decades when something new comes along.

 

 

Cheating becomes a bigger issue when the breaking of records is involved, be it the 100 meter dash, the 50 meter butterfly or the greatest record of them all - the career home run record.

 

I think the cheating of Gaylord Perry, Albert Belle, Norm Cash, Don Sutton, etc. would have received greater scrutiny/disdain if they were close to breaking any of baseball more cherished records.

[RegulusBlue]

Wow. What a terrible article.

 

What a higher than thou article. The national nightmare?

 

We just watched a great hitter hit more homers than everyone ever has.

 

History is history. He hit the bombs.

 

I don't like Barry, but I'm not taking anything away from what he did.

[fromthestretch]

This implies that baseball players in the future/track stars of the present aren't/won't be on PEDs.

 

Doesn't it also kind of ignore the fact that other cheating has gone on throughout the history of the game? People have been taking greenies for a long time. Spitballs, corked bats, scuffed balls, etc....have been going on for several generations. I'm not saying any of that excuses what's gone on with steroids/PEDs, but a lot of those other forms of cheating never seem to be met with this kind of anger.

 

Cheating will continue to evolve in all sports. The key is whether the governing authorities for those sports can manage to not ignore it for a couple decades when something new comes along.

 

 

Cheating becomes a bigger issue when the breaking of records is involved, be it the 100 meter dash, the 50 meter butterfly or the greatest record of them all - the career home run record.

 

I think the cheating of Gaylord Perry, Albert Belle, Norm Cash, Don Sutton, etc. would have received greater scrutiny/disdain if they were close to breaking any of baseball more cherished records.

 

That's what I don't like about any of this. People seem to only give a damn about those that threaten to or actually break records (and it certainly doesn't help that Bonds isn't exactly a people person). But no one got up in arms about Matt Lawton taking steroids. Where's the public outrage over Neifi Perez taking stimulants?

 

Out of those you mentioned, does Perry win 300 games without doctoring the ball a bit here and there? That's a pretty exclusive club, so you'd think there would be more outrage over that.

 

That's the thing that I don't like about all the Bonds outrage. If they manage to punish him somehow for all this, it doesn't erase the fact that a crapload of players got away with the exact same thing, and no one will ever care. Hell, no one really ever talks about Palmeiro anymore, and he actually got caught.

[The Voice of Reason]

Wow. What a terrible article.

 

What a higher than thou article. The national nightmare?

 

We just watched a great hitter hit more homers than everyone ever has.

 

History is history. He hit the bombs.

 

I don't like Barry, but I'm not taking anything away from what he did.

 

Did you take anything away from Ben Johnson's or the East German swimmers' "accomplishments?"

[fromthestretch]

Wow. What a terrible article.

 

What a higher than thou article. The national nightmare?

 

We just watched a great hitter hit more homers than everyone ever has.

 

History is history. He hit the bombs.

 

I don't like Barry, but I'm not taking anything away from what he did.

 

Did you take anything away from Ben Johnson's or the East German swimmers' "accomplishments?"

 

The Olympics started disqualifying athletes in 1968. It's not like they were turning a blind eye to it during Ben Johnson's years of competing.

 

MLB turned a blind eye to it for a long time, including much of Bonds' career.

[The Voice of Reason]

Wow. What a terrible article.

 

What a higher than thou article. The national nightmare?

 

We just watched a great hitter hit more homers than everyone ever has.

 

History is history. He hit the bombs.

 

I don't like Barry, but I'm not taking anything away from what he did.

 

Did you take anything away from Ben Johnson's or the East German swimmers' "accomplishments?"

 

The Olympics started disqualifying athletes in 1968. It's not like they were turning a blind eye to it during Ben Johnson's years of competing.

 

MLB turned a blind eye to it for a long time, including much of Bonds' career.

 

True, but the East German swimmers were not "caught" until several years later after the Berlin Wall came down.

 

I agree that MLB deserves blame for turning a blind eye to the steroids scandal as does the union, players, agents and fans - however that doesn't make it OK that Bonds cheated to obtain the greatest record in baseball.

[nilodnayr]

While I in no way support Bonds, I think the most ineresting point that is never talked about that makes absolutely no sense is why Bond's would have to take a steriod that is undetectable and much less effective than other steriods when Baseball wasn't even testing for it at the time.

 

I absolutely believe the circumstantial evidence is damning (foot size, head size, hell whole body, increasing in size dramatically), but the above point is an interesting one.