Related Link: Aaron says Bonds should keep HR record
At any rate, I think Luckovich hits the nail on the head.
Thanks, K B
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Charitable of Aaron. The “well, he cheated but he should keep the record anyway” and “everything’s okay as long as he admitted it (about a-rod)” is nice, but pretty simple-minded. That kind of thinking would say “madoff admitted his guilt, so we should just let him keep his ill-gotten gains. After all, we all cheat at something.”
All of the whining is getting old. Baseball owners, managers, players, and the associations representing all of them were complicit. I agree with Jeter that the list of those who tested positive should be released, but only so people can have their whine and shut up afterwords.
If I want to kick back and watch some games it isn’t because I want to know the inner workings of the players’ ambitions.
We live in an era when professionals at the highest levels of everything are cheating and robbing us blind. Bankers, CEOs, and traders all up to no good. For them, I’m thinking French Revolution style treatment. For pro-ballplayers? Big whoop!
A-Rod is, and has always been, a scumbag. I think that astute observers of the game already thought he was on the juice.
The only real benefit of doing away with steroids is that games are more interesting. Many of the steroid era teams were stocked with guys who could barely hit the ball, but when they did WATCH OUT! Made for hella boring matchups.
#1
Lest we forget that the pitchers Bonds faced *also* cheated and were juiced. IMO, it all washes out.
#2
> The only real benefit of
> doing away with steroids
> is that games are more interesting.
To purists, perhaps, but to casual fans the opposite is most definitely true. Purists loves 1-0 games that go 15 innings and six hours. Casual fans want 15-14 games that go three hours. Baseball was never bigger than when McGuire and Sosa were battling for the home run record. Sports are interesting when there is drama. When you have 170 or so 4 hour games including playoffs, it is hard to build drama.
He signed a contract, including terms of conduct for professional baseball. This is a grown man, and the excuse that everyone else does it is not valid. Yes they should remove it to send shock waves through the leagues. These same drugs are endangering the lives of high school kids. No free pass in this case. I’m probably one of the few here that watched that 1974 game. Aaron deserves better, he is a class act.
How many home runs were hit with corked bats and how many strikeouts came from scuffed balls. Pushing the envelope has been going on since the beginnings of the sport.
If a player tests positive, then send him home for a few months. If he doesn’t test positive then let him play and his record stand.
You are wrong on this one Hank. They cheated, you didn’t.
I’m curious as to how it is you think that Bonds “cheated”. There were no rules in baseball against the use of steroids when he hit his home runs.
Makes you wonder if Aaron is saying this because he has some skeletons that he doesn’t want a spot put on himself.
Cursor_
Thomas. Do you seriously think that those who injected anabolic steroids thought they weren’t cheating? Of course they did but they cared more for their careers and statistics than playing clean.
Just because the rules weren’t written down at the time about chemical enhancements didn’t absolve them of their crimes. What they did, they knew darn well was wrong and went ahead and did it anyway.
Bonds, McGwire, Afraud and all the others are cheaters and anyone playing today who is caught should be banned from the sport for life. They should never be heroes to any kids ever again.
Sponsors should jump ship the minute they find a player has used steroids or Human Growth Hormones.
Fans should not forgive them.
That’s the only way to get the game back to what it was, clean and fun.
#9, unfair,
Thomas. Do you seriously think that those who injected anabolic steroids thought they weren’t cheating? Of course they did but they cared more for their careers and statistics than playing clean.
They cared about being the best they could be. They were paid millions to put up the numbers.
Just because the rules weren’t written down at the time about chemical enhancements didn’t absolve them of their crimes.
So would using a new type of footware that gave them another half step be cheating? Or how about a coating so the ball would stick in the glove better? They would use them and more.
Sponsors should jump ship the minute they find a player has used steroids or Human Growth Hormones.
Most sponsors support winners. If you don’t support them, another one will. Only seldom does it matter to the public if their hero took performance enhancing drugs.
When the public see a gold medal swimmer dropped by a food company because he smoked some pot, they see hypocrisy. They see the cereal loaded with sugar and stripped of vitamins, fiber, micro nutrients, and minerals.
Baseball players, in untold numbers, used steroids.
This much we can all agree upon. It’s certainly not the only stain on baseball’s past. 1919 Black Sox, the racism and segregation that kept black players out until Jackie Robinson played, etc. etc.
It shows just how ignorant those ‘fans’ are who say that those who used steroids should be kept out of the hall of fame.
What about those countless numbers of baseball players who used amphetamines, or ‘greenies’ as they were known in baseball circles, for energy and specifically to get going for a day game after a night game? Mike Schmidt, hall of famer, has admitted to using them and saying they were widely used as far back as the 50s. Where’s the outcry about these players ‘cheating’?
Gaylord Perry built a CAREER out of cheating…spitball anyone? Yet while his cheating is seen in a jovial way, players taking steroids are somehow evil and bad for the game?
McGwire and Sosa SAVED baseball from itself after the disastrous 1994 strike that cancelled the season (no, it was not cal ripken breaking the games streak, but if you think he didn’t take any substances to break that record, you’re a fool – but that’s another conversation). ‘Chicks love the longball’ was the slogan of the time – MLB, Bud Selig, the owners, all looked the other way when players came into camp with 30 pounds of muscle added in an offseason and MLB pocketed BILLIONS of dollars.
Now, Bud and his cronies want to pin the blame on the players and take on none of the responsibility. Bud, this happened on YOUR WATCH you slob. YOU are responsible. YOU are the one most at fault. But yet you pocketed nearly 20 MILLION dollars last year in salary. Bud, where is your culpability in this travesty?
All the numbers need to stand, all the players need to be judged on their performance on the field in relation to those of their peers. If a player is found to have used steroids, what you DON’T do is to asterisk their numbers, or keep them out of the hall of fame, you vote them in and, on their display, you say so. So when a parent takes their kid to see them 10-20 years from now, they can tell the story.
The most ironic thing about these buffoons calling for the heads of steroids users are that, if the roles were reversed, they would have GLADLY taken steroids. If you say otherwise, not only are you a buffoon, you’re a LYING buffoon. There’s not a person in the world who wouldn’t take a substance if they knew it would make them millions and millions of dollars.
#9
> Do you seriously think
> that those who injected
> anabolic steroids thought
> they weren’t cheating?
“Cheating”? No. Did they think that taking steroids would potentially create bad publicity and maybe even criminal charges: yes. Cheating, by definition, is breaking the rules to win. If there is no rule against some action, there is no cheating.
> That’s the only way
> to get the game back
> to what it was, clean and fun.
When exactly was that? The only way to make it “clean and fun” is to stop keeping score and stop paying to watch it. The moment you decide to keep score and crown a champion, people are going to try to get an edge to win. The moment you also pay billions to watch it, the incentive to get an edge will be enormous.
Like I said, baseball was far more interesting to casual fans when guys were regularly hitting balls out of the park.
Have a link to Luckovich?
#3 I don’t see how both pitchers and hitters doing steroids is a wash. The pitchers today don’t throw any harder than they did in the seventies (Nolan Ryan comes to mind). Pitch speed is basically a mixture of mechanics and arm length. The ball weighs so little that strength is not much of a factor. I have seen 180lbs 6’2″+ guys throw in the mid 90s.
I would say steroids and the shrinking strike zone in the 90s are the two big reasons that homeruns are up in the last twenty years.