Yet amazingly, this punishment is still too severe for the "crime." One of the greater wastes of federal prosecutorial resources in the past few years.
I wonder if he'll have to do the regular community service? I feel like I've read that they have famous person detail.
I agree with 2. Barry would almost have been betraying the hometown fans if he had simply watched all these jacked-up mediocrities winning home run titles and carrying their teams to the Series without 'roiding up himself.
5 gets it right. Bonds is the victim of a bait and switch by MLB. He should have said 5 to congress instead of lying, but it's not a big deal. Bonds was a great ball player who wouldn't have done steroids if they weren't necessary for him to keep up with the worse juiced players. He started steroids relatively late.
Yeah, it's a shame we don't have contemporaneous records of what he was thinking. Somebody somewhere wrote a column to the effect of 5/6, imagining him glaring into a mirror circa 1998 and muttering to himself "they want spectacle? I'll give those SOB's a spectacle like they've never seen" and then inflating like Bruce Banner.
There's this article which kinda has that. http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2368395
Bonds ... wouldn't have done steroids if they weren't necessary for him to keep up with the worse juiced players.
I'm gonna need some evidence on that one. "Necessary for him to keep up" seems a little much, no? He hit 73 fucking home runs in a single season of his 762 home run career. "Necessary for be a consistent home run leader in a juiced era, or to shatter all those records"? Sure, I buy that. But those things weren't necessary at all. He could have remained gainfully employed by MLB (and could probably even have continued to be a perpetual all-star) without the steroids.
Necessary to keep up with McGuire and Sosa. He started doing steroids after they had their 70 HR year.
Bonds is a jackass, and deserves a big 'ol asterisk. But prosecution is too much.
They got Martha Stewart on obstruction of justice too, but she actually went to prison.
Sure, a hypercompetitive jerk. But the point is that he felt/knew he was *the best* player in the league, maybe ever, and was not at all content to be in the top 15 or 20 just because a bunch of hacks were juicing. I find that position halfway sympathetic.
11: right. What justifiable need did he have to "keep up" with them?
I find that position halfway sympathetic.
Obviously, I don't, but I guess now at least I understand where you're coming from.
I find that position halfway sympathetic.(/i>
I find it totally sympathetic, and I'm a Dodger fan. Anyone who wants to dock him status as (at least) the second-best player of all time because he chose to compete in the league in which he was in, well.
The JRoth bat signal is blinking faster on this one than if someone inappropriately mixed savory and sweet in their poorly-designed kitchen.
18: Hey, it's okay, buddy. Have some HGH. It'll help you comment better.
Note that steroids were (arguably, but I think accurately) not even really against the rules in baseball until 2002.
19: But it apparently made him land in another thread.
19: Hey look, here I am.
Believe me, I don't have the time or really the stomach to get into a big hoo-hah about this, but a few points:
status as (at least) the second-best player of all time
#2 (or better!) is extremely hard to support on pre-1998 performance. Top 10, pretty much without question (barring a career-ending injury before 2000, which would have led to a Koufax-like, tragically truncated career), but, for example, there's little pre-1998 evidence that he was a better hitter than the vastly better-defending Mays, and he was clearly an inferior hitter to Ruth, setting aside Ruth's elite, but brief, pitching career. If he stayed healthy, he had a solid shot at top 5, but even with health on loan from GodBALCO, he wore down before Aaron did. I'm sure people have done this calculation multiple times, plugging his pre-juicing numbers into historical aging patterns, but I'd guess he ends his career at 600-odd HRs, with elite but not historic OPS numbers, and the discussion about all-time best hangs on debates about his defense (which was very good for an LF, but no one ever thought he could be a CF, which means he was only providing so much value out there. Manny could play LF).
Note that steroids were (arguably, but I think accurately) not even really against the rules in baseball until 2002.
I appreciate this phrasing very much, but it reminds me of how, over at LGM, LeMieux and Farley said, roughly 762 times, that "baseball had no anti-steroid policy until 20XX". And then someone produced a memo from Fay Vincent in 1993(?) saying that steroids weren't allowed in MLB, and the two of them pivoted without a moment's hesitation to another formulation that allowed them to continue to claim that nobody ever did anything against the rules. As Keynes said, when the facts change, I change my position; what do you do? The fact that anti-anti-steroids people basically hold to their positions no matter what* tells me that their position has nothing to do with facts, and everything to do with personal taste.
As for understandability, the guy is, was, and probably always will be a jackass, but yeah, it was understandable. Even setting aside the ego effects ("who are they to challenge my superiority?"), you get to be a pro ballplayer by combining talent with competitiveness. His competition was cheating and getting away with it, and he therefore had every incentive (except personal integrity, of course) to do the same.
It's interesting to note that, as a widely-despised egomaniac, he was in a uniquely good position to rat everyone else out and allow his untainted superior talent to shine, but that instead he chose to beat them at their own game and thus put himself in position to also outperform earlier, greater talents. I doubt that 1998-Barry foresaw that potential outcome (although, maybe), but it's certainly how things played out.
* before the Mitchell report, most of them denied that steroid use was widespread. Many of them, during the steroid era and even down to today, claim that there's no reason - at all - to think that unprecedented performance and aging patterns associated with known steroid users - but not their clean peers - are in any way attributable to steroid use. The dishonesty of the argumentation is breathtaking.
On the legal/punishment issue, I'm a bit torn. Obviously, what he did was insignificant from any global perspective. The same is true of petty thieves, yet they get sent to jail, so.
Furthermore, a huge chunk of the claims of anti-anti-steroid folks is that, since steroid use was merely illegal and against stated MLB policy, but not actively policed/punished, it was therefore tacitly legal. By this logic, Corzine did nothing wrong, but set that aside. If sending Bonds to jail sends a clear message that violating these US laws, even in furtherance of athletic excellence, is a crime in the same way that violating other US laws is, I can live with that. Make your argument that steroids should be free and legal, don't rely on judicial indifference to make your argument for you.
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Are 'shafters following this advice?
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Make your argument that steroids should be free and legal, don't rely on judicial indifference to make your argument for you.
The reason I think he shouldn't be charged is not that steroids should be legal (although, yeah, I think they should be), its that obstruction of justice is a bullshit charge that they throw at you when they can't prove what you've really done.
NMM to using a neti-pot filled with Louisiana swamp water.
obstruction of justice is a bullshit charge that they throw at you when they can't prove what you've really done.
Except the same argument applies to Capone's tax evasion charges. The price of our high evidentiary standards + "beyond a reasonable doubt" is sometimes BS charges are the only way to get at criminals. Obviously, BS charges also get applied to innocents, but the same is true of legit charges.
I've never read anything that makes me believe that Bonds didn't, in fact, break federal laws in his drug use, so I can't make myself care about the injustice of him getting a cushy sentence for a lesser charge.
Note that steroids were (arguably, but I think accurately) not even really against the rules in baseball until 2002.
They were, however, unambiguously illegal from 1990 on. (Not to disagree with your 2.)
obstruction of justice is a bullshit charge that they throw at you when they can't prove what you've really done.
It's also to impose consequences for fucking around with a criminal investigation.
hey everybody, for the record, don't make a cop's life difficult by fucking with him somehow, or he will nail your ass eventually.
Eh. Obstruction bothers me.
You are not required to do something just bc the cop told you to do something.
That said, dont be an ass to a cop is always good advice. But, I have seen a ton of obstruction charges that were totally bullshit. No legal basis for them whatsoever, and the cop suffered no consequences for arresting someone and putting them in jail.
I agree that the police should have som latitude before they suffer consequences, but when you arrest someone for something that is clearly no illegal that is the same thing as kidnapping.
I thought the sarcasm was evident in the original. these are always bullshit charges because they couldn't prove the real case and are mad because everyone from the cops that asked the questions to the DA looks like an asshole. that said, it's still good, generally, not to ruin a cop's day. it seems like if a cop asks you the time you should probably just call your lawyer and let the cop talk to him on your phone. "yeah, it's 3:30."
sorry gswift, you're a stand-up guy, but your profession is riddled with bullying assholes. wait, and will's a lawyer, right? oh fuck it.
I'm not claiming a shenanigan free profession or anything but obstruction charges have their place. Think of Penn State type stuff. Covering for and/or aiding felons shouldn't be consequence free.
"shenanigan-free profession" snort. if there were ever, ever in this world some shenanigans going on, dear gswift...
Comments like 9 and 23 seem to miss the point of competitive team sports. Bonds' team was losing out and Giants fans were not getting the best possible performance within the accepted competitive environment at the time. Bonds was being paid, what, tens of millions of dollars a year by his organization to deliver a championship and the best possible baseball for his team and their fans. Was he supposed to deliver inferior baseball and lose out on bringing a World Series to the city?
Forget someone producing a memo. Steroids were de facto tolerated in baseball. There was no enforcement or testing, blatant evidence of juicing was totally ignored, steroid users were worshipping and rewarded, and competitive outcomes were seriously distorted. When league management sets up that kind of competitive environment at the highest levels of a professional competitive sport, it's not the players' fault when they try to keep up with it. The entire point of a competitive sport is to try to excel your competitors.
Note that this is different than players working to cheat on and undermine an actual enforcement structure that the league is clearly committed to.
38: I think it's totally fair to say they moved the goalposts on Bonds.
35: this is why I'm not handing Bonds a get-out-of-obstruction-charges-free card; he was protecting something far, far less bad than systematic child rape, but it wasn't exactly the neighbor's grow closet, either. It was a national-scale manufactory of illegal drugs. And he, himself, had materially broken the law - this isn't throwing an innocent in jail to force him to turn state's evidence against a real miscreant.
I wouldn't be thrilled with hard jail time, and in general I'm not a fan of the war on drugs, but this outcome doesn't strike me as unjust. God knows Bonds deserves this far more than half the users facing actual hard time do.
38: So Griffey should be excoriated for failing to do PEDs?
"That bum wouldn't even shoot himself up with horse blood for the team. Fuck him."
Anyway, I said in 23 that I'm reasonably sympathetic to his motivation: "you get to be a pro ballplayer by combining talent with competitiveness. His competition was cheating and getting away with it, and he therefore had every incentive (except personal integrity, of course) to do the same."
38: So Griffey should be excoriated for failing to do PEDs?
"That bum wouldn't even shoot himself up with horse blood for the team. Fuck him."
Anyway, I said in 23 that I'm reasonably sympathetic to his motivation: "you get to be a pro ballplayer by combining talent with competitiveness. His competition was cheating and getting away with it, and he therefore had every incentive (except personal integrity, of course) to do the same."
39: Don't be silly. There are no goalpsts in baseball.
When league management sets up that kind of competitive environment at the highest levels of a professional competitive sport, it's not the players' fault when they try to keep up with it.
Yes and no. Cycling is instructive here: Between 1998 and 2008, the UCI* grew ever-more serious about testing and kicking out dopers, but it had very little apparent impact on usage - more effort was put into hiding use, but it doesn't appear that doping grew significantly less widespread. Then, after Armstrong retired and virtually everyone who had ever been in the top 5 with him had been caught and kicked out/retired, a change happened within the peloton. Whereas the cyclists in 1998 sat out a stage departure in protest of a doping raid having occurred, in 2008, cyclists sat out a depart because a rider had been caught but not yet kicked out**.
Point being, enforcement from above is of limited effectiveness without buy-in from below. Now, you're right that MLB wasn't enforcing whatever limited, stated policies were in place, and so you can hardly blame juicers for juicing. But it's not the case that responsibility is solely on the authorities, because the authorities simply cannot root out doping (or other cheating - spitballs, high tech sign-stealing) unless players are on board. The same is true of cheating at colleges, incidentally - a well-respected honor system is far more effective than the most stringent set of rules that aren't respected by the student body.
*Int'l Cycling Union
** oversimplification of the situation