frostwyrm

Walker's comments were slightly more obnoxious than Neifi's, but I agree, they both should keep their mouths shut.

I also believed Neifi would be the starting SS but I'm not 100% sure now. It very well could still turn out that way but Neifi can shuffle around the infield and get something very close to starter's playing time, so he doesn't really need to be a designated starter at any one position to save the Cubs again. Obviously if Cedeno has a bad April Neifi takes over fulltime at SS, and IMO it's a given that Neifi gets 50 starts at SS unless Cedeno puts up ARod numbers.

Bonds could salvage some of his reputation and win over a lot of HOF voters if he just retired now and made a good speech. Something like "I've accomplished everything I set out to do in my career, I am wholly satisfied with my achievements", etc. People would know he was talking about Aaron and Ruth's records.

I don't see how Bonds can be excluded from the HOF without it constituting a sweeping indictment of the HOF-worthiness of anyone who played in his era. What are we supposed to do, exclude everyone who played then? For better or worse, the stats of Bonds et al. are in the official books and they demand some acknowledgment.

I think it's true for some, maybe many. I think some black youth, as well as white youth, see the culture surrounding basketball and, to an extent football, as much more glamorous (although that might not be the right word) than the culture of baseball. Basketball stars are much bigger celebrities than baseball stars. And baseball is a much more humbling game. Football stars have a greater tough guy aura, while baseball players just aren't thought of as elite athletes. If you wanted to do it just for money, baseball is probably your best bet. But if you're 14, thinking over your options, the lure of the college basketball star, or college football star, or straight to the NBA star is far greater than the minor league baseball player or college baseball player. There's a very limited cool factor for those last two. I agree, glamor matters enormously. Sports is entertainment and pop culture. Since when could you discuss a piece of American entertainment or pop culture without considering its glamor quotient?

Deep, Dusty....deep. It is what it is.

That's one of my theories too. There is a lot of failure in baseball. Even the best batters will get put out 60% of the time. You need a lot of humility to learn baseball. All this egomaniacal hip-hop gangsta attitude that has been shoved down kids throats has made it a lot more difficult to whiff on a curveball and take it like a good sport. Humility has never been a strong point of hip-hop culture.

1) Poor people in America have less disposable income now than in 1975, and schools had more money to spend on nonessential activities in 1975 than they do now. 2) In Latin America there's both poverty and as a result of that poverty a more permissive climate (for example: if there is no glass in the windows, no one will be chased from the streets because they might break a window, and if life expectancy for street kids is very short, no one will raise a fuss about not having helmets). I'm still not buying it. The percentage of black MLB players is 37% of what it was in 1975. Disposable income hasn't declined that much. The basic problem is that most black kids simply don't like baseball all that much anymore.

This team has zero credibility on injury info so we're all in the dark, as usual. I honestly have no clue what will happen with Prior.

Depends of the quality of your outfield defense. If you are pitching for the Giants you have to be careful with Pierre. You wouldn't want all of Pierre's hits to go for extra bases.

I don't buy the arguments about expense being a problem. Black players comprised 27% of MLB in 1975. Was there no poverty in America in 1975? Plenty of Latin kids from undeveloped countries are learning baseball and poverty in those countries is way worse than in America.

I can't see baseball ever being compatible with the hip-hop generation. The pace of the sport is wrong, and the whole vibe is wrong. Also, baseball is getting to be perceived as a white man's sport, and lots of black kids don't want to be associated with any pop-cultural thing that is perceived as being too white, and sports definitely falls under the umbrella of pop culture.

http://www.butterfatmastermind.com/auctions/images/sempron/LennyDaChamp.jpg

Where is Dusty being singled out? He's one of many, because of that should we never mention his name in the discussion? What thread are we in again? So now somebody can't start a thread responding to an absurd quote from Dusty? Singled out would be saying that Dusty should be banned from baseball, it's all Dusty's fault, Dusty is the problem. Talking about his part of the problem is not singling him out. Sticking your head in the sand to ignore the problem is exactly what helped make the problem what it is today. People are saying "everybody is guilty therefore nobody is guilty." That's absurd. Everybody is guilty so nobody should be punished. That's not being absurd, it's being practical. You want to give Bonds what he deserves? Why? His image is already crap. Injuries will drive him out of the game soon enough without his little pick me ups. He'll still be able to DH for a few more years, but as an outfielder he's almost finished.

I still do have a tendency to put on unwanted muscle in my upper body. I am a distance runner now and I like to stay as light as possible but if I lift anything heavy my arms and shoulders blow up real fast, consequently I try to avoid working those muscles much. That's just extra baggage as far as I'm concerned, and it doesn't do my knees any good either.

See, this is my point. I may be totally different from other people (and I may sound like an internet embellisher! :^o ) but I did put on 15 pounds of muscle in 100 days. The spring of my 34th birthday and again the spring of my 35th. That's a total of 30, and I've lost hardly any. I hope to do it again since I turned 36 last Sunday. I tell this because I worked out a lot in the preceeding 7 years and didn't gain a lick. Only when I completely dedicated my diet, lifestyle, and certain lifts did this happen, and it was extremely difficult while working full-time and being a married father of two. But, it did happen and so when people say it's impossible I disagree. Especially in the case of professional athletes with unlimited time, motivation, and money to help with their goals (even if they do it without the juice). Again, I believe Bonds did steroids. What I don't count as proof is that he put on 15 pounds of muscle in the '98 off-season. That on its own does not seal the deal for me. Nor does one picture. All that other stuff in the book excerpt is convincing enough. I've put on 15 lbs. of muscle in about 75 days, but I was younger then. I doubt I could do it now.

Smith can work out as hard as he wants because he doesn't have to catch up to a 95 mph. fastball the next afternoon.

It kinda does. I used to lift weights like crazy and became quite big, benching a little over 300 lbs. Doing the type of workouts I did requires at least a day of recovery time, and you're weak and stiff during the recovery day. Baseball doesn't give you many days off, so I can't see how any drug-free person could do a linebacker's weightlifting program during the baseball season and still play 5-6 games per week at a peak performance level. Remember, one of the primary benefits of roids is that they dramatically reduce recovery time. Also, the season is 6 months long, so I don't see any way you could avoid losing a lot of muscle by September unless you continued to lift at the same pace at least through the first half of the season. I can tell you when your muscles get really big they also quickly deflate if you slack off. It is really hard work to stay huge and ripped. All these roid monsters stayed huge from April to October. There is no way they could have done that without chemical help. Maybe every person is different, but once I put on muscle it doesn't go away. I may lose a little water weight if I back off for a while but that's it. I'm just saying a photo alone, taken that very minute doesn't prove anything. I guess what I'm saying is I could post a picture of Will Smith from I, Robot and say "see, roids" and I don't think that makes it so. Will Smith has never played a 162-game 6-month baseball season while lifting.

I can also say from experience that post-workout recovery times don't get any shorter as you get older. Rather the opposite.

Me neither. If you went off looks alone, every running back at the N.F.L. combine last week was on the gas. There's evidence, it's just elsewhere. Football is played once per week, baseball 5-6 times per week. That makes all the difference in the world.

It kinda does. I used to lift weights like crazy and became quite big, benching a little over 300 lbs. Doing the type of workouts I did requires at least a day of recovery time, and you're weak and stiff during the recovery day. Baseball doesn't give you many days off, so I can't see how any drug-free person could do a linebacker's weightlifting program during the baseball season and still play 5-6 games per week at a peak performance level. Remember, one of the primary benefits of roids is that they dramatically reduce recovery time. Also, the season is 6 months long, so I don't see any way you could avoid losing a lot of muscle by September unless you continued to lift at the same pace at least through the first half of the season. I can tell you when your muscles get really big they also quickly deflate if you slack off. It is really hard work to stay huge and ripped. All these roid monsters stayed huge from April to October. There is no way they could have done that without chemical help.

That's how I feel too. Other managers were turning a blind eye too, the whole sport was. It isn't fair to single out any particular manager as being more sleazy than others, unless perhaps that manager was involved in the actual procurement/distributing of drugs.

I don't think Ty would have used drugs if they had been available. He always stated that "i may have been rough sometimes, but I was never unfair." For several years near the beginning of his career, at Tiger homegames there was a trick the team used where they had a boy in the scoreboard who had a pair of binoculars to look at the catchers sign. The boy would slide a certain card into a slot in the scoreboard if it was a curve pitch coming, one for a fastball, and one for offspeed. For all the years they did this, Cobb told them to piss off and told the kid not to do it when he was up because it wasn't fair...but mainly because "I don't need it anyways" While he was an awful human being for the most part and did gamble on baseball (mainly always on himself i.e. he'd bet the bookies that he'd hit a double to right field, then steal third and steal home, etc...and usually won), I don't think he would use performance enhancing drugs. In all of my research about him, I just don't think it would be in his character to cheat physically. But who can say. Well alright maybe Cobb was a bad example but the point I want to make is that the baseball hereoes of yesteryear weren't all great human beings and I'm sure plenty of them would have availed themselves of today's pharmaceutical technologies given the chance. In my view Bonds is just a jerk who happened to play in an era when lax rules and modern technology made it possible for jerks to explore the full extent of their jerkhood. The primary blame goes to MLB for allowing such a deporable situation to arise, then letting it persist for years after the problem was known.

I'm not defending Bonds but I'm sure he gets an extra helping of abuse because he's so damn unlikable as a human being, but that shouldn't matter for HOF consideration. Ty Cobb was way worse and he's in the HOF, and Cobb probably would have used drugs too had they been available. I don't know if he would have been hulked up on roids but I bet he would have put greenies in his corn flakes.

I don't object to giving Grissom a chance to be a lefty-only specialist. The obvious danger is that he excels in that role and then Dusty takes that as a sign to expand the role.