imb

it was your bad haircut and faded ty willingham tattoo

I am the way, the truth, the light. Have you tried to the kool-aid? are you really a ND fan? you're lucky this incriminating evidence didn't come out BEFORE your promotion, though I guess there's time for an O'Leary

Good luck with that. Go for Maris while you're at it. Now those would be real "witch hunts." You can nit pick all you want but nothing in baseball history will compare to your tarnished heroes from the steroids era. You sound like someone told you there is no Santa Claus. maris was a good power hitter who suddenly had the best HR season in the history of baseball, but he went bald during that year and then got hurt a lot afterward and retired, never coming close to approaching that homer total. fits the profile

what would that accomplish? It's impossible and no team would do that, anyway. Do you put it in every contract? Obviously the player's union will never allow that. So you do what? put it in some player's contracts, but not all? Who gets it then. ARod? Great, now the Yankees have to void ARod's contract while everyone else just gets suspensions. this is not feasible in any way

come on, the union would never allow a player to sign a contract like that. be serious

oh crap i better shape up or ship out

who is grcubsfan

the minute bonds' guys turned the pressure on the prosecution, arod's name came out, what a shock

we're going to end up with thabeet and hansbrough, i can feel it

KD's february numbers 33.5 ppg, 5.8 rpg, 3.8 apg. 1.0 bpg, .554% from the field, .563% from 3, .852% FT He's averaging over 42 minutes a game in the last month+, so he'll burn out before too long, but he really is a scoring machine

No kidding. I'd take a horrific Andruw over a less than mediocre Gathright any day of the weak. At least with Andruw there is a slight chance he might figure out how to hit a baseball again. Obviously I don't want Gathright on the Cubs, but considering the last two yrs of AJ, and NOOOO I wouldn't even offer him a minor league contract. Unless he proves otherwise, AJ is done. it probably needs to be pointed out that 2 years ago gathright and jones posted the exact same ops+ (88)and that was in gathright's career year. at least andruw is fat, what's gathright's excuse

Me too. While he did do that, why is that more important than a roided Bonds who broke the most cherished record in modern day sports? Is a walk greater than a home run? this is the kind of talk that people are sick of. Someone clean will one day break Maris' home run record and they will do it using all kinds of supplements and video and things that Maris never had a chance to use. Will you still be upset about it? No, everyone will cheer about how great it is that we have this all-natural slugger when there's very little difference between what he will have done and what Bonds did.

Me too. While he did do that, why is that more important than a roided Bonds who broke the most cherished record in modern day sports? Is a walk greater than a home run? Bonds took away one half of the plate. Knowing where the pitch was going to be made it much easier to hit. Add his knowledge of the strike zone and his armor might have attributed to just as many home runs as steroids did. No way. You can still throw the ball inside when a player crowds the plate. It is actually easier to jam a hitter when he does that. Bonds was no closer to the plate during the early 90's compared to the late 90's and early 2000's. He hit way more home run during the latter. His body armor might have increased in size, but crowding the plate did not give him 72 or break Aaron's record. His massive arms did. Arms have very little to do with hitting home runs compared with legs/core. It's not like these guys are just in the gym doing curls.

What else could I have been talking about other than steroids

I directly stated that I disagreed with your point. Just because I don't agree with your point does not mean that I don't understand it. I am not misguided because I think it is pretty certain that the average person and sportswriter does not care if athletes do illegal things as much as they care about illegal things as they relate directly and influence the sport (ie steroids). To focus on what fans and sportswriters don't really care about, while certainly a part of the overall steroid debate, is incidental. You are missing it, because my entire point has been that they shouldn't. We're just talking over each other here because you're talking about something else entirely.

You're intentionally skipping my point. If you can't stick to or follow the actual discussion, then I guess I should just call it quits here.

My point is that it's a thread about its effect upon records and integrity of the game because that's all people care about, which is misguided considering all the facts.

Yes people would care if someone broke Maris' record with creatine. But creatine is not strong enough to do so. Anything that a person puts into his body must be extra powerful in order for a person to break Maris' record unless they were that once in a generation person would could do it cleanly. I don't think Bonds, Sosa, or McGwire was that person apart from the juice. I thought ARod could have been, but who knows now. This makes no sense. Bonds was 100 times the player Maris was, even before he juiced. If you laid out Bonds' and Maris' careers, Maris' is more suspect looking than Bonds' is. And you're still missing the point, that you should be upset that these players are breaking the law, not that they're breaking records. Every time an old record falls, the player that broke it did so with the aid of something that is "unfair" in that the old record holder didn't have access to it. But no one cares unless it's a home run record broken by a steroid user.

that's actually a very good point. :shock: Weed is like creatine. Heroine is like anabolic steroids. The effect of steroids is many times stronger. why does potency make it wrong? It doesn't, it's wrong because it's illegal, yet no one talks about that. it's always about some historic record that someone broke. creatine is many times stronger than working out with no supplements, but no one would shed a tear if a player hit 62 home runs while working out with creatine, something maris never had access to.

that's what i'm getting at. A player uses steroids and people want to erase his records or put an asterisk by them or kick him out of the game or keep him from the hall of fame, but the justification is never (or rarely) "they're illegal." It's always about the unfair advantage over players who don't use or didn't use. if baseball comes out and says "hey, look, we're erasing barry bonds' record because he used steroids and they are illegal" I will be fine with that. But when people say that Bonds' records shouldn't count because steroids gave him an advantage that Aaron and Maris didn't have, I can't buy it. Bonds had access to a lot of stuff that neither of them did. If someone never, ever takes steroids but hits 74 home runs because he watched a lot of tape and swallowed a gallon of fish oil a day, will those same people talk about an unfair advantage? Hank Aaron couldn't watch clips of himself on his IPod or shop at GNC.

No. I don't think you can erase records. But you can make sure they don't get into the Hall of Fame. That's not what i'm talking about

when a player gets busted taking weed onto a plane, they do a little community service maybe get a little suspension, take their fine and people forget about it, as long as they don't get repeatedly caught. And something like that has no positive effect on their on-field performance. But if someone takes steroids to make themselves a better player, people react like the guy just punched their kid in the balls and pissed on their mom's grave. And they're doing something that's going to have a POSITIVE effect. Steroids are banned, they're illegal, you shouldn't use them. I get that. If a player uses them and gets caught, suspend him for 50 games or whatever it is and move on. But all this crying about babe ruth's record and hank aaron's record and roger maris' record, get over it. Barry Bonds broke Hank Aaron's' record. Mark McGwire broke Roger Maris' record. They both did it on steroids, something Hank Aaron presumably didn't use and something Roger Maris definitely didn't use. But Bonds and McGwire both had access to TONS of stuff that Aaron and Maris didn't. Do you want to discount records because hitters get to use legal supplements now that neither Aaron or Maris had access to? If a guy hits .400 this year and credits it to watching tape of pitchers on his IPod, should we erase that because Ty Cobb hit .400 without it?

what i'm saying is that why is that wrong? well, i know why it's wrong, because it's illegal. but no one harps on bonds for breaking the law, they harp on him for cheating. steroids give you much more of a boost than a legal supplement, but the right combination of legal supplements gives you much more of a boost than just buying $10 creatine at wal mart. If player a hits 30 home runs and does it by taking nothing and doing 500 push ups every day, and player b hits 50 home runs while running 500 dollars worth of legal supplements into his veins before every game, no one is going to give him a hard time for not doing it naturally, even though he's just as "un-natural" as someone who uses steroids. i guess my issue is the legality of steroids and how people react to users.

I know there's a big difference between creatine and other supplements and steroids, but there's a big difference between creatine and other supplements and not taking anything, too. No one is going to flip if you go drop a paycheck at GNC and work out 20 hours in the gym, but if you take steroids all of a sudden everything you've done in the game is negated. Never mind the fact that it's just a really powerful supplement. I turned on the radio today and some yahoo.com sports editorialist was literally about to pee in his pants freaking out about what a disgrace ARod is now and how he didn't come by his numbers naturally etc etc etc. But none of these guys are natural (outside of maybe david wells). You can pump a thousand dollars worth of legal supplements into your body and hit the gym and win MVPs and everyone will worship you and you'll be a hero or you can pump steroids into your system and STILL Have to hit the gym, but if you get caught you're enemy No. 1. If people want to twist their panties about it, complain about the players breaking the law and shut up.

At first I did a double-take because, damn, that's a lot of money. But really, it might just be overpaying by just a few million a year, and it's better to overspend $4 million a season for three years than pay him 14 million per over 7 or whatever. What I'm trying to say is it's worth it to overpay for three years instead of pay him his actual value for seven. I'd rather have given Soriano 20 million a year for 3 years than 17 for 8 or whatever it was. If that's what it took to keep the years down, it was probably worth it.