You know, I miss Lizardbreath's posts.
If there's a god, Bonds will get hit by a bus after he hits 754
That would be a pretty vengeful god. Couldn't he just tear his rotator cuff on the swing?
Apo, you're talking to the guy who believes in decapitating adulterers.
He calls when he's drunk. I humor him.
You're the God Humor Man? I never would have guessed.
Ogged, sweetie, you might want to talk to someone about these delusions of grandeur you're having.
God I am so glad you posted this.
Fuck Bonds and the hypodermic he rode in on.
Stop commenting on Bonds and go watch that video.
I have to admit that "shoot me in my breasts, shoot me in my mouth" is really disturbing.
Of course, so is everything else.
It's certainly weird that she says in for the former, it's not like she needs to for subtlety reasons.
ogged: Gaylord Perry, Hall of Famer. Right or wrong? Ty Cobb, Hall of Famer. Right or wrong? Rickey Henderson, future first-ballot Hall of Famer. Right or wrong?
Did they really put a guy named "Gaylord" in the hall of fame?
I guess there really is a place called Hope we can all still believe in.
What's the objection to Rickey Henderson? Being arrogant and referring to himself in the third person is hardly cheating.
Ogged, you should start going to Giants games wearing a shirt with a big asterisk on it. I'd even make one for you.
Ricky Henderson objects to 14.
To be a cheater, don't you actually have to be breaking rules and shit? What rules was he breaking during the period in which he seems to have been doing steroids?
19: The rules against being a big cheaty cheater. Duh.
I second 16, what's with the Ricky hating? And Gaylord Perry to me is different because the ump can examine the ball at any time. It's not like the ump can give Bonds a quick roid test.
Oh yeah, and fuck Barry Bonds.
Oh they should have thrown the record books out when they started making those parking-lot style stadia in the 60s
It's not like the ump can give Bonds a quick roid test.
But, the ump could yell out "cheater" and see if Bonds flinches in guilty recognition, no?
Could he just grope Bonds's balls to test for shrinkage?
Come on, now. Hank Aaron never had to face pitchers on 'roids either.
Hank Aaron never had to face pitchers on 'roids either
Placement and ball movement make it hard to hit. A few extra miles per hour ain't gonna do it.
26: But the rage in their eyes, gswift! Hank never had to fact that!!!
I suppose you don't believe Bush is the real President either.
16: Henderson, with 99% certainty, used amphetamines to keep his energy up and stay sharp over the course of a season. Which was, to be clear, not cheating at the time, since MLB didn't ban their use. Of course, as Scott points out, correctly, in 19, Bonds' steroid use wasn't cheating, either, since it wasn't breaking any rules.
The same cannot, of course, be said for Gaylord Perry, who was a big fat cheater and got elected to the Hall of Fame by sportswriters who knew with 110% certainty that he was a big fat cheater, but didn't care. Moreover, doctoring the ball was banned for good reason, but the evidence that steroids can make one into a better hitter is pretty flimsy.
Why would those writers vote for Perry and not Bonds? Could it be that Perry was a beloved by those same writers and... white? Racism? In baseball? Never!
Bonds didn't cheat, in that he didn't break the rules of baseball. Bonds used illegal substances to get an edge, just like other people already in the Hall of Fame and just like people who will be voted into the Hall of Fame. And however huge an asshole Barry Bonds is, he is not so huge an asshole as Ty Cobb was.
Bonds' Hall of Fame case is airtight.
Also, I'm a Rickey Henderson fan, but I want to be clear that greenies were huge in MLB in the 70s and 80s. And yet nobody talks about revoking the records and Hall of Fame inductions of players from that era.
but the evidence that steroids can make one into a better hitter is pretty flimsy.
Dude, look at McGwire's homeruns and batting average for 1998,1999, and 2000. Check out the same for Bonds for 2000-2004. Now consider that these guys were born in 1963 and 1964. Doesn't it seem a bit odd for pro athletes to string together the best seasons of their lives in their late 30's?
Man, I almost forgot.
Fuck Barry Bonds.
You guys forgot Lasse Viren of Communist Finland. Also the bionic bicyclist who dated that famous singer even though he only had one nut.
gswift: Increasing power and patience as a player ages is pretty common. And if McGuire and Bonds are poster children for what steroids can do for you, why aren't we even now reading about Jamal Strong and Alex Sanchez, Home Run Kings? Both McGuire and Bonds were great hitters before anybody alleges that they started using steroids. What they accomplished was unprecedented, it's true, but, well, so was what Babe Ruth accomplished, and all he abused was food, alcohol, and women. That's the problem with being a historically great player; what you do looks out of place next to your contemporaries. And very, very few other players that we can believe with some confidence used steroids have experienced anything like what McGuire and Bonds accomplished.
Also, again, I'm waiting for you to make the case that Gaylord Perry, Ty Cobb, and Rickey Henderson are Hall of Famers, but Barry Bonds is not. I'm not arguing that Bonds isn't a jerk, because the weight of evidence is that he's not a very pleasant person (though I also think that the fact that he is filled with contempt for the bulk of baseball writers speaks well of him, not ill). But he's not proven to have violated the rules of baseball, he's done nothing more 'cheaty' or illegal than others, including other Hall of Famers, have done before, and the evidence is that whatever benefit he's seen from steroid use is a marginal contributor at best to having made Barry Bonds into Barry Bonds.
If you are not a good hitter, steroids won't make you one. But if you are a good hitter, i.e., you know how to hit, then steroids = bigger muscles = more power when you put bat on ball.
Bonds obviously knows how to hit. The karmic justice Ogged longs for has already been meted out, in that Bonds' steroid use has prevented people from acknowledging that he's a pretty damn good hitter, drugs or no drugs.
Seriously, Bonds could end up like Lyle Alzado, so don't begrudge him an award.
With his numbers, Bert Blyleven would be in the Hall of Fame except for prejudice against the Dutch.
19 and NBarnes have it exactly right.
I'll take another step: I don't mind Barry Bonds. I hope he hits 50 this year.
f Barry Bonds breaks Hank Aaron's record and it's treated as a legitimate accomplishment, it will be a fucking travesty.
Phelps breaking records right and left, on the other hand...move along folks, nothing to see here.
I find the argument that "steroids weren't against the rules!" to be unconvincing.
Bonds is a big fat cheater.
It's clear that the hormones he was taking (we can call them 'steroids', since I guess that's become their common name) were only available to a certain small subset of athletes -- those with access to Balco, and the money (and will) to purchase their products. Bonds, Sheffield, Giambi, Bill Romanowski, etc. It wasn't like everyone was getting Greg Anderson to rub flaxseed oil from the trunk of his car, on their knees and joints.
Furthermore, it's clear that it's had a significant effect on Bonds' statistics. It didn't make him a better hitter, and it may not have given him much extra strength... but it's given him the ability to add a lot more muscle mass through training, and it's made him a lot less susceptible to injury (and the normal wear and tear of the baseball season) than other people would have been. Any reasonable look at Bonds late-career statistics show that they have an abnormal shape that's completely unique in the history of baseball -- at some point, everyone's statistics begin to trail off, it's almost a fact of baseball. That trailing off usually takes a characteristic shape. And Bonds career statistics are a complete anomaly, totally unheard of. They just kept going up and up and up... [Until maybe the last year or two finally caught up to him -- having nothing to do with the prosecution of Balco and baseball's crackdown on 'steroids']
And that's important because the record he's going to be famous for breaking is one of longevity. This is not a question of steroids building muscle mass -- Aaron didn't have access to a designer laboratory synthesizing custom hormones in the last years of his career. Neither do the vast majority of players today.
Face it, Bonds is a big fatty fat cheater. And Gaylord Perry doesn't make it any better, in just the same way that no one else saying something about 'hos' excuses Imus, or makes what he said any more palatable.
Bonds, Sheffield, Giambi, Bill Romanowski, etc.
"Bill Romanowski is set to play a gay cowboy in a movie called 'Weiners.' "
The hormones he was taking were only available to a certain small subset of athletes.
That's true of a lot of stuff -- fiberglass poles at the beginning, swimmer's racing suits, high tech bicycles, kayaks, and bows, low-oxygen rooms, top ski equipment.
People tell me that life is not fair to the little guy, and who am I to argue?
I take it you're a fan of NASCAR, Emerson?
Face it, Bonds is a big fatty fat cheater.
So what? So's at least half the game--Roger Clemens, c'mon, who do you think you're fooling--and probably as high a percentage of champions across all sports. I'm becoming more and more convinced that the attitude is that it's only cheating if you get caught. I don't think athletes are more immoral now, so I assume there was significant cheating in the past. In some sense, how well you cheat is probably going to have to be folded into "gamesmanship" or something. I don't know what that does to sports, generally. And when someone demonstrates that the same can and has been done in basketball, I'm going to be very depressed.
Well, first of all, Clemens is also a big fatty fat cheater. I don't think he's associated with Balco (right?), so that's why I wasn't bringing him up in 43, but it's still true.
Secondly, I'm aware of the fact that there will always be gray areas. Certainly in the area of training and drugs, to be sure. But at least with the issue of the equipment listed in 45, when people use a lot of that stuff, everyone can see it. "Oh, right. He's got one of the new fiberglass poles." Or, "sure he broke that record, look at his fancy new swimsuit."
I think the issue with Bonds is that a lot of people have decided that this is beyond the gray area. I mean, what if you woke up tomorrow, and found out that Phelps (say) was winning because of magic? He's quoted in the newspaper, "I found a wizard who gave me supernatural swimming powers a couple of years ago, I thought everyone knew that? Anyway, anyone could have done it too, if they knew about the wizard and had enough money to pay him." Now, there are no rules against magic in swimming (I presume), so he didn't "break any rules," I guess. And he's right, "anyone" could have done it. But that doesn't mean that he's not breaking the spirit of some Law of Competition, and "cheating" in a very real sense.
Anyway, 19 is also a joke. I'm not a lawyer, but I bet there's at least one rule that Bonds has broken.
In the absence of a rule, how is it cheating? By offending one's sense of the purity of the game? (I'm reminded of the Dean in Wonder Boys who's made an academic career out of Dimaggio: the husband as slugger.) I'm as Field of Dreams/Boys of Summer/heart and mind of America as George Will, but let's face facts:
If baseball really cared about steroids over the last ten years, they would have always been expressly against the rules, there would have been institutionalized (even if inaccurate) testing, and Bonds wouldn't have been able to alter his body to perform at the highest level for a longer time. The only reason there's a backlash now is because Bonds never made nice with the establishment, and baseball's recovered from the strike of '94 (thanks to McGwire) and can afford to risk some bad PR.
Steroid use sucks, and those who overintellectualize baseball (myself included) will hate Bonds ( I'm an obsessive Dodger fan and hate him anyway), but he was gaming the system, and it was tacitly supported by the power structure, and it's only biting him in the ass now because he's a cocky asshole.
And, unavailable? What's the median salary in baseball these days?
McGuire was taking steroids well before Bonds and everybody was treating him like he was the best thing since apple pie. After McGuire broke the home run record, Bonds started taking steroids. I can't say I blame him. If McGuire gets in the hall of fame, it will be a joke if Bonds doesn't.
Just because Baseball is currently administered by a bunch of former used-car salesmen, corrupt money-hungry administrators whose lack of oversight and poor leadership abilities are only exceeded by their cynical attitude toward the fans of their own game -- does nothing to excuse Bonds, any more than Gaylord Perry being in the HoF does.
There are higher powers to answer to, here.
Also, McGwire is a big fatty fat cheater ... and likely won't make the hall of fame, if the most recent ballot was any indication.
. But that doesn't mean that he's not breaking the spirit of some Law of Competition, and "cheating" in a very real sense.
What does that mean? Are we going to validate behavior against said rule by having all the players vote on the behavior? People who don't work the gray areas, whether b/c of an internal compass or b/c they just didn't think of it, always complain that someone else is violating the Spirit of Competition. I bet you can go back ten to fifteen years and see any number of amateur Olympians bitching about the shamateur Olympians--the ones being paid can focus on training, have access to better equipment, etc.
53 -- well, the slow consensus of public opinion is one thing. Gray areas indeed.
But it's going to be pretty funny if Bonds has to join his Hall of Fame induction ceremonies live via satellite from a federal prison somewhere.
Obviously it's a violation of the spirit of competition if one has magic powers.
If one used biologicals (that were available to everyone in the game, and were illegal in the sense that one didn't talk about it in order to protect George Will and the children) to keep one's healing rate high as one gets older, and to keep from losing muscle mass, is that the same offense to the spirit of competition?
If you want to compare yourself to Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth and the ghosts of baseball watching over you who didn't have access to said biologicals, maybe, but if you (like Bonds) just give a shit about being the best possible player you can be without breaking the rules, and saying fuck-you to the people who would keep you down, like Bonds, well?
McGwire will get in on third or fourth ballot. Voters just wanted to punish him by keeping from getting in right away. He helped stave off the eventual death of baseball for another few decades, and that won't go unrewarded.
55 -- "is that the same offense to the spirit of competition?"
My answer to that is (obviously) "yes," but I know not everyone agrees with that.
I think what I meant to say above was,
53 "all the players" s/b "the general public".
Jesus H., cheater defenders. A cheating asshole is about to break one of baseball's great records, held by someone who is by all accounts a great guy. Travesty. Simple.
Only on a blog full of lawyers and academics could the argument that it was illegal, but not cheating, because baseball didn't have a rule against it, even be attempted.
For the rest of this thread, Counterfly or SCMT or someone should comment as "Jesus H. CheaterDefender".
Shrug. His assholery is irrelevant, cf. Ty Cobb. Same thing for Hank Aaron's good-guy-ness. I'm fine with being sappy and ghosts-of-baseball, but you should just admit it if that's the argument.
Fwiw, I don't care if he breaks the record. If he does, everyone will know it's tainted, whatever that means, and it will just be an interesting addition to the kickass world of baseball lore.
As for the illegality of what he did, that's a separate issue, right? Players do illegal things all the time, like be tax cheats and drunk driverts, and they can still get into the Hall of Fame.
Most of my intuitions on the Bonds thing stem from my memories of him playing for Pittsburgh, being decently good, and then fading away, leaving town, and all of a sudden becoming a power hitter.
I know steroids just give you the ability to work longer and with less fatigue, and you still have to have the work ethic to put in the time at the gym... but who the hell are we kidding. Bonds' longevity isn't due to a work ethic.
Cheating's got to be about more than following the rules, because the rules don't list every possible permutation that's illegal, especially when new breakthroughs in drugs are happening.
Steroids is everywhere in pro football. After awhile you get used to it. If you're into performance, steroids is no problem. If you believe in the purity of competition, it's a big problem, but I don't. Highly competitive people tend to be jerks.
Suppose you found out that Yo-Yo Ma used drugs during training and performances? Would his music become invalid?
PS, Ogged, some of us have anti-prohibitionist tendencies.
61 -- Music, no. Claims that he was the greatest cellist in the world? Possibly.
Let's restart this thread keeping in mind that analogies are banned.
Now that the Yo-Yo Ma barrier has been broken, I am so tempted to make the porn analogy.
Ma was our last hope.
Music and magic, Ogged. Can't you just accept the Mystery of analogies?
The rules should make explicit just what *is* allowed, then, to prevent ambiguity in this complex modern age.
"Don't take anything. Protein is okay. And Red Bulls. And B12. And greenies. Also, coffee. Submit an application for anything else."
Oh, and Barry didn't "fade away" in Pittsburgh. He was astoundingly good his last year in Pittsburgh, and they couldn't afford to keep him. We're talking league-leading OPS in 90, 91, and 92. That's colossally good. If you just want actual numbers, he destroyed the league in 1992, being in the top 3 in almost every relevant offensive category, *definitely* including power.
What the steroids kept him from tailing off from being the best player in the league, which he basically was in the early nineties.
The new-ish shark-skin suits in swimming always bothered me, but what can you do?
At least aluminum bats won't ever make it to the bigs. Now *that* would be a travesty.
Wait, what? So, illegal hormones are in, but no aluminum bats??
The defenders of Bonds here remind me of my contracts prof who argued that there should be no securities regulation because, hey, everyone has access to information, and if someone can get it on an inside basis, why shouldn't he/she be rewarded? Since these days we've all taken a bite out of the proverbial apple -- and "know" that "pure competition" or baseball as a "great american pastime" is just a story covering up a century of filthy lying and cheating -- we're all ready to assume that the status quo is (or should be) equivalent to that of Lord of the Flies. So fine, if the true rules of the game is that there are no rules, and athletes (or investors) can go to any absurd length to win, great -- the problem is that that's just not a world anyone wants to actually live in, except in theory, except in the context of a conversation like this.
And ultimately, while some defenses of Bonds I think have some merit, those which embrace the baseball-as-Rollerball view are just efforts to sound like a tough guy. Try to analogize it to your own workplace -- what if you had to snort crank every morning to keep up with the next guy? Hey bro, those are just the "rules"!
In other words, "This isn't 'Nam, Smokey, this is Bowling. There are Rules."
No; I have no problem with illegal hormones being actively tested for and explicitly banned.
And, again, not like the "illegal" matters. Friendly doctors are a dime a dozen.
Bonds just make me think back to when he and Bobby Bonilla were "the killer Bs" in Pittsburgh, and the very brief period when they couldn't decide who was better. The Mets went with Bonilla, naturally.
Question: I thought steroids WERE always against the rules (at least some formulations, not andro or whatever McGwire took) but that baseball didn't actually test or enforce the rules at all. Am I wrong about this? Where did I get that idea?
I think that if I liked baseball more, I'd like Bonds less. Billy Martin and Pete Rose really made me say, "Who cares?" They were enormous jerks, even by baseball standards, but being a jerk works in sports.
I'd also preemptively say that gambling on sports is much worse than using steroids.
Thoughts on large numbers of players getting LASIK to improve their vision to 20/15? Seems like it could easily be considered cheating, but on the other hand, why not?
Is the situation that Bonds used substances that MLB hadn't thought to ban yet? Or was he blatantly violating the letter of existing rules?
73: No, steroids weren't always against the rules, largely because unlike in most other sports, the players' union actually has some power. Putting into place a drug-testing system that has any hope of being effective requires being able to test players at any time, not just during the season, and the players' union was (IMO, reasonably) unwilling to go along with that, viewing it as an undue burden on the players.
75: And what about Agent Zero's oxygen tent?
A cheating asshole is about to break one of baseball's great records, held by someone who is by all accounts a great guy.
This is the thing that pisses me off about Bonds discussions... someone always has to call him an asshole. Why is he an asshole? Because he's mean to fucking sportswriters?
Here's an article from '05 which mentions the "previous agreement," under which it seems steroids were still not allowed. Anyway, why did Bonds deny it up and and down if it was fine? Come on. He cheated.
I should clearly watch basketball - all the descriptions I've read of Arenas make me think I'd like him. But does 76 mean that if you hate Barry Bonds, you hate organized labor?
79: Because he didn't want to deal with a bunch of whiners telling him that whether or not steroids were legal he was still a bad person for taking them?
The previous agreement was rolled out early this decade, I think, and allowed testing only during the season (and maybe spring training). It was never going to be terribly effective, since dopers could always stop using before the tests, but some morons got caught anyway. In the '90s, there was no testing agreement.
Why did Bonds deny it? Possibly because at some level he bought into the same moralistic bullshit that so many other people buy into, that your successes only count if you achieve them "naturally", whatever that means. I'd love to see someone come up with a logically-consistent framework that allows for improved training techniques but disallows steroids... but I don't think it can be done.
But does 76 mean that if you hate Barry Bonds, you hate organized labor?
Goes the other way, I'd say. The owners have done a wonderful job of stoking resentment against the players' union, aided and abetted by sports "journalists" who make Judith Miller look skeptical.
The main thing that I'm mad at Bonds for is needlessly complicating debate over where he stands among the greatest players ever.
I also would suggest that Hank Aaron has truly legitimate reasons to be mad at Bonds, in that there's a good case Bonds has in fact wronged him.
Why did Bonds deny it? Possibly because at some level he bought into the same moralistic bullshit that so many other people buy into
The simpler and less belligerently dismissive explanation is that he knew it was wrong.
Barry Bonds*. Get used to seeing his name that way.
If I found that Ogged, like Rush Limbaugh in radio, did all of his fantastic internet work while wasted on animal tranquilizers, I would not think one bit less of him. The quality of the output is the only thing that makes any difference.
And if Ms. Althouse were to come whining along saying that she should be named champ because she does everything organically and without artificial chemical aids, I'd just say "Bite me, bitch. Even without help from his little friends, Ogged with his hands tied behind his back could blog your panties down around your ankles in a New York minute! He's got it, and you don't!" I really stick of for Ogged.
The poor self-hating guy. Ogged is probably throwing out his Yo-Yo Ma CDs as we speak, just because he doesn't want people to know that he likes the angel dust too.
Whether there was testing actually doesn't answer my question at all. I thought it was against the rules, and the rules weren't close to effectively enforced. Still against the rules if you don't get caught. Entirely predictable and very widespread cheating, but cheating all the same.
I love Barry Bonds - I hope he gets to 800 this year.
It is beyond dispute that Barry Bonds was a HoF player before there was any suggestion of him using steroids, so he clearly qualifies.
In the absence of any rule against steroids, it goes without saying that, by definition, Barry Bonds was not cheating - even if he was taking steroids.
And yes, I am a lawyer.
I was not making an analogy. I was just subtly raising the animal-tranquilizer issue. Ogged should talk.
86 is going in the hall of fame on the first ballot.
Yeah, there's some injustice in Barry beating Hank. But eventually Pujols or somebody will pass them all, so who cares.
And the Hall of Fame will induct Barry, and McGuire eventually. They will also put up a Heroes of the Roid Age exhibit, with Barry's flaxseed oil jars and Canseco's syringes, and circles representing various thigh diameters that you can step into. It'll be a gas.
Sure is quiet around here on weekends.
Whether there was testing actually doesn't answer my question at all. I thought it was against the rules, and the rules weren't close to effectively enforced.
There were three stages. Up until 2002, there was no rule against steroid use. Then in 2002, the players and owners agreed to limited testing, starting in 2003; if more than 5 percent of those tests were positive, a more stringent testing regime would go into place. Between 5 and 7 percent of the tests were positive, which triggered the new testing regime, and then in 2005 the players and owners agreed to even more strict rules against steroid use.
Perusing the intertubes, this popped up:
Steroids are a Category III controlled substance under federal law. But while federal law outlaws the possession, manufacture, and distribution of steroids, it does not outlaw their use.
Indeed, until the end of the 2002 season, steroids were not tested for or subject to punishment under the rules of Major League Baseball or the Basic Agreement between the league and the Major League Baseball Players' Association. Though steroids were outlawed, and tested for, in other sports, including professional football, cycling, and in the Olympic Games, baseball had not yet taken those steps.
Criminalization of possession seems sufficient reason to deny use.
As for the record, I guess I surprise myself in thinking it's OK to give it to Bonds without asterisk. The ball went over the wall each of those times. Runner(s) scored. Games were decided, or otherwise altered. Pitchers pitched around Bonds, etc. Roy Hobbs could be erased, but only because the New York Knights were a product of Malamud's imagination.
Criminalization of possession seems sufficient reason to deny use.
The problem comes in enforcement. Would you submit to random drug testing at any time to ensure that you're not using an illegal drug at your workplace?
Professional baseball is an inherently corrupt sport, and everyone in it - players, owners, media, fans - are tainted by association with it.
Look at the corrupt arguments we see here: If you don't get caught, you aren't guilty - or Josh's 93: if there's no mechanism to catch you, it's not even against the rules.
Baseball is shot through with this kind of thinking. The idea that the owners and managers just found out about the prevalence of steroid use is ludicrous. And look how the sports media reacted when Jose Canseco came out publicly with the truth.
ogged blames lawyers and academics for the moral logic here, but I think the fault lies with an even more decadent group: baseball fans.
This discussion is bizarre. Whether or not it's against the written rules of baseball has nothing to do with whether Bonds should get into the Hall of Fame, or whether or not his breaking Hank Aaron's record is a travesty. Ogged's point is that Bonds' last 150 home runs are complete bullshit. If baseball passed a rule tomorrow that players could just buy home runs added to their stats, and Bonds paid 57 million dollars to put his total over Aaron's, then while Bonds would have legally broken Aaron's record, it would still be complete bullshit.
Look at the corrupt arguments we see here: If you don't get caught, you aren't guilty - or Josh's 93: if there's no mechanism to catch you, it's not even against the rules.
You're either missing my point or willfully misrepresenting it. It's not that there was no mechanism to catch steroid users, it's that there was NO RULE against steroid use. That changed in 2002.
99 -- You have been unclear. Talking about testing, and enhanced testing masks the unlying point. I thought mine would clear it up.
96 -- I was responding to the claim that use must have been prohibited, or Bonds wouldn't have denied it. No, I say, he can be denying it for the other reason that his possession of the stuff was a crime.
Talking about testing, and enhanced testing masks the unlying point. I thought mine would clear it up.
Ah, sorry, I was trying to explain *why* there was no rule against it previous to 2002.
No, I say, he can be denying it for the other reason that his possession of the stuff was a crime.
Gotcha. I completely misunderstood what you were saying. (And I didn't mean 96 to come off as confrontational as it may have seemed. I think the steroid controversy in baseball actually has a lot of relevance to the issue of workplace drug testing in general, and I was trying to draw that parallel.)
86: Greatest Emerson comment yet?
Walt, you're free to call any HR hit by a DH bullshit, or any HR hit in Denver bullshit. Or any HR hit by a member of an 'evil' team bullshit. That doesn't mean anything about stats of a game.
If something is a HR under the rules of the game, it's a HR. And it's not like people are trying to claim Bonds' HR's in derbies, or batting practice. It was actual play.
Johnny Bench get's it right.
Yeah, I'd like to get back to what Josh just said. In what sense were steroids cheating before 2002? As far as I can tell, they were just one hi-tech training method among others. As far as illegality goes, steroids are a legitimate medical drug and many athletes got steroid prescriptions from MDs. Three players in the most recent Super Bowl had steroid prescriptions filled not long before the game, and they were caught entirely by accident because of a disclosure in a legal case unrelated to football.
I don't know the details, but steroids help the body repair itself after the kinds of injury and overuse characteristic of sports. (I've been treated for tendonitis by steroid).
Upon further review, 93 and 94 are correct: Baseball did not ban performance enhancing drugs until recently. Even with my low opinion of baseball, I didn't think MLB was that corrupt.
98: I'm just saying that it's bizarre, in turn, to judge Bonds by different standards than we judge Ty Cobb, Gaylord Perry, or Rickey Henderson. I've never understood why Bonds is the devil but Perry is a lovable rogue.
Ideally steroids or any other drug that the team physician is willing to write you a prescription for should be allowed just like lasik surgery. The objections to drugs that improve on nature are just another form of religious puritanism.
I've never understood why Bonds is the devil but Perry is a lovable rogue.
Bonds is black, Perry is white. Perry's form of cheating also has a long history in baseball, and is more cunning than doping. Any meathead can shoot up, after all; it takes smarts to hide Vaseline under your cap and not get caught.
I also suspect Perry never had the toxic relationship with the media Bonds does. The press has been making him out to be the devil as far back as '93, when he signed with the Giants. (Remember the foofooraw about him wanting to wear number 24?)
I used to think of myself as someone who cared about baseball, but this thread is making me realize that's no longer true.
Only on a blog full of lawyers and academics could the argument that it was illegal, but not cheating, because baseball didn't have a rule against it, even be attempted.
This is so very, very untrue.
103 - What's your point? We're not talking about shooting Bonds in the head for his crimes against baseball. Bonds' home runs already count in the record book and on the scoreboard. No one is going to go back and change the outcomes of those games by deleting Bonds' home runs. The records of baseball are part of its mystique. When Bonds breaks the home run record, will that completely destroy the mystique of the home run record? Yes, it will.
Let's say that it came out that Bonds had a robot arm installed, but that robot arms were not illegal. You don't think that would make a mockery of Bonds breaking the home run record?
107 - I think that no one remembers anything about Cobb other than the hit record. I was surprised that Perry made it into the Hall. The revelation about Rickey Henderson is new to me, so I haven't had a chance to re-evaluate. I personally liked Bonds for being so obnoxious to sportswriters; it's strictly the steroid use that bothers me.
108 - So what? We're not talking about whether Bonds needs to go to church and say 10 Hail Marys. Baseball is a game that we spectate voluntarily. If I don't want to spend my leisure time watching drug-engorged freaks, what's it to you?
109 - Cute. But Bonds was one of my favorite players, and I never gave a shit about Gaylord Perry. I was probably the last person in America other than Bonds' mom to accept that Bonds was doing steroids...
My point is that America was an innocent prelapsarian paradise, and then Barry Bonds came along.
Walt, maybe you'd understand if you did some steroids yourself and got up to strength.
The last thing we need is more steroids in commenting. That's never good.
Technically cheating or not, and whether he (or Perry or Cobb or anyone else) belongs in the Hall or not, the fact remains that a significant number of Bonds's home runs are bullshit. Not in the sense that they didn't count (as Charley points out, the ball went over the wall), but in the sense they are tainted, and -- to a certain extent -- undeserved.
I don't see any strong argument for discounting the record, or for giving him an asterisk, or anything like that, but as a fan of the game, I'm pissed. When Bonds was smashing records and most of the sports media was hostile to them, I was on his side. I thought what he was doing was amazing, and his personality shouldn't have been an issue. His personality still isn't an issue; his cheating is.
112
"... If I don't want to spend my leisure time watching drug-engorged freaks, what's it to you?"
Nothing as long as you don't try to impose your preferences on me.
Haters who don't want to watch drug-engorged freaks are worse than al Qaeda or the Taliban.
There. I said it! It's soul-destroying to let PC keep you from speaking THE TRUTH.
Are Babe Ruth's home runs tainted because he didn't have to face Satchel Paige?
Also, is Travis Hafner a drug-engorged freak just because his body produces more growth hormones than most people's naturally, as opposed to him having to inject them?
Was Mordecai Brown cheating when he threw curveballs? If not, if I had my hand surgically modified so that I could grip baseballs in an unusual way that allowed me to pitch similarly to Brown, would I be cheating?
If I were, say, OCD in some mild way, such that my every waking moment was spent figiting with baseballs, thinking about how to pitch, and every time I let a batter make solid contact I'd flog myself with thistles after games, and I never did anything except pitch and think about pitching and punish myself for not pitching well enough, and I won 450 games with a lifetime ERA+ of 167 and committed suicide at the age of 45 when a rotator cuff tear ended my career... was I cheating? What if my OCD was totally alleviated by drugs, but then I started sucking at pitching, so I choose to go untreated so as to continue to pitch effectively?
Barnes, we try to avoid making these things personal.
#111
Fine. Only on a blog full of lawyers, academics, and feminists could the argument that it was illegal, but not cheating, because baseball didn't have a rule against it, even be attempted.
Happy now?
There will never be a bright, strong line between legal training and illegal doping -- already things like EPO can only be detected by implication -- but there doesn't need to be for regulations banning steroids to make sense. If you don't have any controls at all, in a world as competitive as professional sports people will inevitably feel pushed to go as far as they can and endanger themselves. The point isn't some kind of academic debate over fairness, it's that if you force players to do steroids to keep up, you're literally putting their lives in danger. Now, obviously, they're still going to try: millions of dollars are on the line. So you do ban the most dangerous substances, and when somebody is a really, super obvious, shameless user, you publicly shame him, call him a cheater, and make sure everybody hears you say it.
122: Nope. Right-wing libertarian nutcases make arguments like that all the time, too.
I just watched Children of Men. Wow.
Nbarnes, you're making a mockery of the analogy ban.
125: Good wow? (I loved it.)
People will inevitably feel pushed to go as far as they can and endanger themselves.
The great ones will. The cowards and losers will wimp out. Baseball players never do anything but drink after they retire anyway.
123: One problem with that argument, sympathetic as I am to it, is that most elite athletes are actively destroying their bodies and endangering their long-term health. I can't think of a sport -- swimming, maybe -- where there aren't unsafe, overtraining methods and lots of overuse, long-term injuries. The price of greatness is a lot of pain.
That's not an argument to allow steroids, exactly, but it becomes harder and harder to tell whether taking supplement X is a less acceptable risk (millions of dollars can buy a lot of therapy) than the sort of training methods that lead to the body breaking down by 35.
130: No question. And elite athletes will always push themselves as hard as they possibly can within the (generously interpreted) rules. Which is why you need rules. Steroids should be regulated for the same reason football banned clothesline tackles. Because they go beyond the bounds of acceptable risk we, as fans, are willing to have somebody endure for our entertainment. Also, it's not the price of "greatness" for most players in a major pro sports league, it's the price of extending the income earning portion of your life from six years to ten or twelve.
As a fan of professional fighting, I'm not trying to get on a high horse, but if some journeyman outfielder pushing thirty would rather live forty more years than see an egomaniacal jerkoff hit more long balls, I think that should be his prerogative.
120: Was it inappropriate for Bill Veeck to send Eddie Gaedel to the plate?
Steroids are also not nearly as harmful to adults as they are to teenagers; this is one of the arguments frequently used as to why they should be banned. Quantity consumed has an effect of course.
121: I'm not sure how you're reading 'personal' into this.
126: Are apologies appropriate? I really am curious about the Mordecai Brown question, though.
Well, if you were hypothetically OCD in some mild way, hypothetically I might find you quite annoying, but I hypothetically might feel bad about just saying so.
I've been wondering hwo we could work a runaway trolley in here.
I might hypothetically say, for example, "Goddamnit Barnes, you've washed your hand enough times! You're clean! You're driving me crazy!" And then your feeling would be hurt.
I'm still not sure where you're going with this. Are you OCD? I certainly didn't mean any particular slander of OCD people. The example of going untreated has more to do with people that I know in my personal life who are mentally or neurologically atypical and prefer to eschew 'treatment' in favor of making the way they are work for them. Also, as you yourself point out, often the truly great achievers in many areas of life, sports and otherwise, make great sacrifices to reach the heights that they do, sacrifices that many people wouldn't make even to be that great.
Personal about you, not about him.
But (IMHO) it all has to do with the level and kind of self-deception people practice; lots of people can imagine themselves training very hard to be great, few people want to imagine themselves juicing to be great; hence they want to see the former. Or imagine that's what they're seeing.
Deluded saps, the lot of them. Bring on the pharmacological extravaganza, I say.
All I meant was that maybe you should have said "Suppose someone...." rather than "Suppose I...."
Oh.
I actually wrote it as 'suppose one' instead of 'suppose I' and then changed it. I do apologize for the rhetorical misstep.
Look, the solution is all very simple. Bonds gets to keep taking steroids, and in lieu of swinging at bat he has to wrestle a fully-engorged bull to the ground. Everybody wins.
I like Barry Bonds. I like his sense of privacy. I like his aura of dignity, of being unanswerable to the dreck of sports media. I have loved watching him hit. I am neither an academic nor a lawyer but I have done construction work on the homes of professional athletes, seen the jars of supplements, the work out equipment, the regimens pasted on the walls, etc. I am willing to believe that Barry Bonds himself believed that what he was taking was in the nature of supplements, that even great athletes can be naive when it is an easy thing to be, but I don't even think it matters. I've never seen any evidence that the phenomenal eye hand coordination he displays has anything to do with steroids and the pleasure I have taken in watching him hit is a possession I value as I do the memory of watching Dwight Goodin pitching in his prime. That's enough for me.
I would be happy with the solution proposed in 141.
109: Any meathead can shoot up, after all; it takes smarts to hide Vaseline under your cap and not get caught.
Yeah, because it's so easy to shoot up and avoid getting caught at it that Balco must not have had any competitive advantage over other sources, and none of the players who were doping could possibly have been exposed by that silly initial screening test. No problem at all.
I'd be willing to allow the concession that Bonds could use a bat to take down the bull.
I would love it if grackel in 142 turned out to be commenting from, I dunno, players.mlb.com or something. I like to think of Bonds as smart and articulate enough to be out looking for those who say mean things about him online and then sock-puppeting against that; just imagine a poet's soul locked inside a pulsating meat shell, wondering how he got where he is now, where it all went wrong.
Just to save anyone else, the trouble:
locked inside a pulsating meat shell
ATM.
I have no idea how that comma got there. Or what I'm doing awake.
As a fan of professional fighting
I've turned OCD about watching mixed martial arts. While on the subject, the UFC just stripped Nick Diaz of a victory because he tested positive for marijuana. Not because it's a performance-enhancing drug (seriously, it could only enhance your performance at competitive eating), but they said at first that it might numb you to pain (not so), and then because they didn't want anybody's reflexes dulled while somebody else was trying to kick them in the face. That last one finally made sense.
Is this entire conversation still proceeding on the assumption that the steroids helped improve Bonds' performance in some way?! Did no one read the link in 39?
The 45-page statistical paper? I admit, I did not.
Apo has bought the lie. So why did the snowboarder win Olympic Gold while he was loaded? Would he have been even better if he'd been clean? I think not. He was disqualified because weed gave him an extra competitive edge, just as it does in all other areas of life.
Et tu, Apo?
See, Apo thinks that without the weed he would have won a Nobel Prize by now. He doesn't realize that without the weed he'd probably be managing a McDonald's. Instead, he's a highly honored technical writer, just as Barry Bonds is a baseball Hall of Famer. There's no shame in owing your success to a substance. We live in a substantial world, as Plato and Aristotle could have told you.
Fuck this bullshit that Perry got a pass because he's white. Spitballers have been winked at throughout the game's history. To claim otherwise is to admit that you have no knowledge of the game.
Fuck this bullshit that Ruth didn't face Satch, so his records don't count. A: Ruth faced pitchers on a mound twice as high as in Bonds' era, and you don't need a 45 page paper to prove what a difference that makes; B: Ruth played in an era when baseball attracted the best (white) athletes in the country - the same is not close to true for Bonds; C: Hank Aaron played in a league where blacks were well-represented - Bonds has not, and there is currently a lower proportion of blacks in MLB than in the US as a whole.
The whole HoF argument is a red herring here, unless you think HoF == "cosmic justice." That said, it doesn't matter that Bonds was a HoFer before he decided to cheat like a motherfucker. Pete Rose was also a HoFer before he broke the rules. Now he will never be in the HoF. Them's the breaks.
Everyone who defends Bonds needs to put on their business cards: "I do not believe in the concept of ethics. The only limitations on my actions are what I can't get away with."
I agree that the HoF argument is a red herring. You don't have to vote the guy into the HoF. You don't have to like him, or approve of his now-banned training regimen.
You can't ignore, though, the ball going over the wall, and being scored as such, during regulation play. The guy has hit each of those HRs. And whyen he gets to a certain number, he gets there. Do I think it's be a good thing if he didn't make it? Sure. But you don't get to disapprove the cataloguing of plays called a certain way in actual play.
(Unless it's the pass interference that Lynn Swann blatantly faked in the 1979 Super Bowl, without which the better team would surely have won the game. That was robbery, and should always have an asterisk.)
JRoth, you really have no choice but to track Bonds down and kill him.
OK, I've skimmed much of Brock's paper, and I'm not especially impressed. I'll state right off that I'm utterly incapable of addressing DeVany's more sophisticated statistical argument on its own terms. But he comes right out and says, essentially, "and then a miracle occurs."
His argument has 2 main parts: HRs across baseball have been remarkably stable over the decades; and, every once in awhile, amazing players come along. That's more or less it. His point isn't to debunk the notion that McGwire, Sosa, & Bonds were hopped up, but that baseball as a whole was hopped up. Which rather fails to defend Bonds in the current argument.
There are a lot of non-statistical things in his paper I do have a problem with (for instance: his threshold for a season is 200 AB, which is about 1/3 of a full season - so he gets to broaden his staistical base by looking at a lot of part-time and, by definition, marginal players; he admits that the Babe's records were set due to the end of the Deadball Era, but still compares Ruth's rapid record-breaking to Mc/S/B's; he lumps non-historic HR totals with historic ones in a failed effort to suggest that '98 and '01 weren't that aberrent; and some others), but the bottom line is that his argument is less about "were these 3 guys on the juice?" than "was all of MLB on the juice?"
I take it that Brock takes this debunking to mean that steroids don't help players, but that's far from proven by this evidence. Only a fool would argue that a poor baseball player becomes Superman with a few injections, so pointing to journeymen who don't become recordbreakers on the juice is utterly irrelevant. The question before us is whether HGH (not just weight-room standard 'roids) rigorously used by a prodigously talented player will enable him to achieve things he couldn't have otherwise. And absent Earth II, with its ethical Barry Bonds, no one can "prove" or "disprove" the case. All you can do is ask, if Barry thought it didn't help him, why did he break the law to do it?
If CharleyCarp is a Cowboys fan, all of his comments should be stricken from the record right now. The man is plainly a menace, and borderline criminal.
Emerson, I'll be sitting in left field at PNCPark today. Let's see is Barry's man enough to face me. Or if he'll fake another "rainout."
Oh, and maybe it's just excessive respect for the analogies ban, but I haven't seen anyone address what I thought was a decent thought experiment with Phelps and the wizard.
On a related note, I'm a huge Lance fan, and I pray that he's clean. The key difference, of course, is that Lance was subject to testing throughout his career, and has aggressively defended his innocence. But you know, if good evidence ever came out that he was EPOd up, I'm not going to run around bragging about how he EPOd better than anyone in his era, and is therefore some sort of fucking hero. I'd point him out to my daughter and say, "there goes the greatest cheater that ever rode." Barry deserves the same.
148: The UFC has to be pretty hardass; if they want a Vegas betting line and/or Vegas events they have to obey Nevaga athletic commission rules. It'll be interesting to see how many of the Pride guys get much smaller/slower or "injured" all of a sudden now that UFC owns them.
Also, it's becoming increasingly clear that we are, in fact, the same person, and no offense, but it's kind of freaky.
Roth, you're a master of the Spock sleeper hold, right? Bonds is doomed.
Re: Lance Armstrong. It's widely believed that he only truly became great after having testicular cancer and the following chemotherapy, massive loss of upper body musculature, and subsequent hormone replacement therapy. Hormone therapy that would have been considered cheating were it not "medically necessary."
And no one would brag that Lance EPO'd better than anyone else in his era, just that he rode the bicycle faster than anyone else in his era. Like Barry and hitting.
High altitude training, laser eye surgery, custom bicycles, wind tunnel testing, computerized opposition research... it's all the same. More than any reasonable person would do, but you don't get to be the best in the world by being reasonable.
The raw power of my righteousness is more than enough to knock Barry down.
increasingly clear that we are, in fact, the same person
Yeah, I've noticed that. Weird.
160, 164: Think how the rest of us feel.
Hormone therapy that would have been considered cheating were it not "medically necessary."
Yeah, cutting off your nuts to get that sweet, sweet hormone therapy has become the norm in most endurance events...
One of the things about Lance is that one of the key ways in which he's different than the competition has been identified and quantified: his heart is an outlier in a sport where everyone's resting rate is super-low. And there's no (known) artificial way to get that heart. He was born with it, and then everything else built around it (including flukes like the cancer and his native insanity). It's worth recalling that Lance was world-class prior to the cancer, just as Barry was world-class prior to.... I mean, he's just great. That's all. Nothing changed. Statistical analysis and smug cycnicism prove it.
Just think what he'd be capable of if wasn't too chicken to give up the other nut.
As a fan, I have nothing but contempt for a guy who isn't willing to sacrifice that second nut. That's my privilege as a fan, right?
Fuck this bullshit that Ruth didn't face Satch, so his records don't count.
I don't think anyone's saying that. What people are saying is that if you're going to ding Bonds for having certain advantages, it's only fair to ding Ruth for having the advantages he had. And in fact, when SABR had an election to choose the greatest player in baseball's history, Ruth won.
A: Ruth faced pitchers on a mound twice as high as in Bonds' era, and you don't need a 45 page paper to prove what a difference that makes;
This would be convincing if there weren't a hell of a lot of other evidence to suggest that the quality of pitching was much much lower in Ruth's day. Unfortunately, there are. (Ruth never faced a slider. There was no such thing as a bullpen specialist. Etc. and so on and so forth.)
B: Ruth played in an era when baseball attracted the best (white) athletes in the country - the same is not close to true for Bonds;
The best athletes drawn from a much, much smaller population, even if you just compare the white population of the U.S. in Ruth's day to the white population today.
C: Hank Aaron played in a league where blacks were well-represented - Bonds has not, and there is currently a lower proportion of blacks in MLB than in the US as a whole.
But the general population from which MLB players is drawn is, again, much, much larger than in Aaron's day.
131
"... Steroids should be regulated for the same reason football banned clothesline tackles. Because they go beyond the bounds of acceptable risk we, as fans, are willing to have somebody endure for our entertainment. ..."
I am perfectly fine with athletes taking steroids or any other drug under the supervision of a physician. I doubt this would in fact be particularly dangerous. You shouldn't believe all the anti drug propaganda.
170: I'm perfectly fine with that, too. But if you're willing to ignore the risk, you can do more steroids for longer, and train much harder than you otherwise would. Short of banning steroids, how do you stop a marginal player (one who would otherwise probably be busted down to the minor leagues, for instance, or one trying to break into the bigs) from crossing the boundary into dangerous abuse? Ask them who their doctor is? Team physicians don't have a stellar record of always acting in the athelete's best interest. The incentive for pretty much every pro athlete to do too much of these substances, if they were legal, would be extreme.
the quality of pitching was much much lower in Ruth's day
Any batter from the twenties facing modern pitching would think teams had imported guys from another planet.
To the righteous and to Bonds-enabling equivocators alike, I say Happy Jackie Robinson Day.
The main problem with steroid use isn't the pro athletes. Pro athletes are a `tip of the iceberg' phenomena, for every one in the pros, there are hundreds to thousands who drop out along the way somewhere. If a significant percentage of *those* young athletes feel the need to abuse substances to keep up or to have a chance at `the bigs', you have a problem. We really aren't talking about a few multimillionaire ex-pro's dealing with debilitating effects of abusing these substances; we're dealing with tens of thousands of young athletes who will never see a dime from sports, and may very well be setting themselves up for chronic debilitating effects or drastically shortened lives --- often a time (late teens) when judgment about these sorts of things is not really a strong suite. Contrary to JBS's rather blithe assertion, there are very well established problems with typical long term usage. There are also potential developmental problems that are less well established. The `anti drug hype' is a perhaps an issue in the sense that steroids et. al. are conflated with other unrelated issues, but there is a core issue with real cause for concern. Much more concerning than your typical highschooler messing around with a bit of weed or whatever.
We're already seeing these changes at the high school level in some cases. If banning substances by way of huge penalties can reverse that trend, I'm all for it.
JBS, my hat is off to you for successfully trolling the most boring Unfogged thread ever.
Sifu, some of us only like pro athletes when they're on the field. We only wish they could kill one another like gladiators.
Ladies have no understanding of sports, finance, war, government, etc. They're most interested in embroidery, babies, flowers, cooking, cleaning, emotions, etc.
177: Well, they could, but I bet the damn lawyers'd mess it up for everybody.
176: Just because the steroids worked well for you doesn't mean it's not a real issue.
176: bah. dammit, you're right. It's a touchy subject for me as it affected a few people I knew.
Any batter from the 20s playing under modern conditions would think he was playing in nirvana:
Lights that come on at the first cloud.
Baseballs replaced literally after the first scuff.
Manicured basepaths.
Rigorous enforcement of no-spitter rules.
Maple bats.
Uniforms weighing less than 2 lb.
I might also add that a lot of old-timers deny that the splitter is really new, although it's undeniable that, if it was thrown in the Olden Dayes, it wasn't nearly as widespread.
149
Art De Vany seems to be a bit of an eccentric but here he says "... Pro athletes take a beating and overuse all their joints. Steroids lengthen their careers and elevate their play because they dampen the inflammatory response, which is very powerful. ..." which would certainly have helped Bonds.
At any rate, I'm only willing to buy the "we're just sayin'" claim about Ruth and black players on a case-by-case basis - I've heard & read far too many blowhards who are making the strong claim, and the strong claim is simply bullshit.
As for the general "larger pool" argument, it doesn't get you as far as you think. The white population of the US was 110M in 1930, and the full population is 300M now, while the number of Major Leaguers has gone from 400 to 750. More importantly, the number of major league-caliber American professional athletes has gone from 400 in Ruth's day to about 2800. Even granting that most offensive linemen aren't 2B material, I'm not willing to concede "far, far larger." As for international players, Asians were scarcely more than a novelty for most of Bonds' career, and Latin American presence has been growing steadily - they were only 10% back in 1990 - meaning that the non-US pool had grown less than you might think for most of Barry's career.
I suppose SABR should be able to tell us whether the 750th-best current major leaguer is better than the 400th-best in Ruth's day. Perhaps more importantly, 375th vs. 200th.
At any rate, the consistency of most stats - .300 is still a good average, 40 HR is still solid but not unusual, top ERAs are in the 2.25-2.75 range - indicate that the overall level of competitiveness has remained level. The extent to which pitching quality is higher is the same reason all sports performance has improved: better health in the population as a whole, better training techniques, and more $$ to invest in young athletes. The question is how did Barry get where he is relative to his peers (not to mention his younger self)? And the answer is HGH, etc.
Cheater.
On the one hand, you have:
Fuck this bullshit that Perry got a pass because he's white. Spitballers have been winked at throughout the game's history. To claim otherwise is to admit that you have no knowledge of the game.
On the other hand, you also have, in the same post:
Everyone who defends Bonds needs to put on their business cards: "I do not believe in the concept of ethics. The only limitations on my actions are what I can't get away with."
That's some strong words to contrapose within the very same post, my friend.
Steroids were winked at when it was McGwire in '98, too. It only became a literal federal crisis when it was Barry Bonds breaking records.
Also, the 'what if Barry Bonds were dropped, in situ, in the baseball of 1926? What if Johan Santana were?' game is a ton of fun. Personally, I think that apo is right in 172; modern hitters and pitchers would be gods in 1926.
175
I seriously doubt steroid use under medical supervision is any more dangerous than other accepted activities like learning to drive. Obviously keeping use illicit makes it more dangerous. People try to discourage steroid use by denying the benefits and exaggerating the risks but this is likely to be counterproductive in the long run. Here is a review of steroid dangers. From the abstract "... Primary discussion will focus on health issues associated with anabolic steroid use with an examination of the contrasting views held between the medical community and the athletes that are using these ergogenic drugs. Existing data suggest that in certain circumstances the medical risk associated with anabolic steroid use may have been somewhat exaggerated, possibly to dissuade use in athletes."
That doesn't mean there aren't any effects. Sure, you might have an enlarged heart simply because you are naturally inhumanly huge, but if you are naturally quite big and take steroids to build mass until you're really at the very theoretical limits of how much weight a cardiovascularly fit human can carry around at high speed, and then you die of an enlarged heart at forty-five, no, there's not causality, but that's a scary and dangerous thing to do, and if you don't have any limits on people's ability to do it you'll have all sorts of excess deaths.
At some point, and I'm not saying this couldn't be different for different sports, you have to figure out what the balance is between testing raw human potential and dangerously fucking around with people's biochemistry. I'm not saying the line has to be where it is now, but at a certain point all you're doing is re-enacting Treadmill to Bucks.
I've been lead to understand that gigantism is a serious risk of doping.
Serious question: How common are asterisks? My clearest memory is seeing the one for Roger Maris's home run record. (Wikipedia claims this is not true; but I remember seeing them (perhaps somewhere less formal than Official Records).
To get people to credit a record, or to put an asterisk, you have to have a critical mass. I'd be willing to bet this will be a generational thing. There will be enough controversy among those of us who were fans in the '90s to care about whether Bonds has a "real" record or not. The next generation won't care.
The next generation won't care.
That'll depend on whether anyone approaches Bonds's record. If Alex Rodriguez ends his career with 850 homers, the next generation won't care. If the steroid era is really over (ha) and nobody post-Bonds has anywhere near that kind of late-career power combined with unnatural injury avoidance, then the next generation will say "yes, that was anomalous, if this record was legit it wouldn't be so unchallenged".
Steroids were winked at when it was McGwire in '98, too. It only became a literal federal crisis when it was Barry Bonds breaking records.
Jesus Christ.
There was a shitload of talk about McGwire and andro. And the reason the roids thing didn't hit the fan until later was because the authorities weren't tipped off to THG until 2003. And maybe, just maybe, Bonds got a bit of scrutiny because of the way the stuff was found in the possession of his personal trainer.
Thanks, g. This "no one cared about McGwire" line is such a load of revisionist bullshit. Like, seriously, NBarnes - are you delusional, or trying to put one past us? Do you remember 1998? The thing was, andro was legal (unlike what Bonds is accused of taking) and also not against the rules - but people were still freaked out. Even though McGwire was, in fact, white (you could look it up).
As for the ostensible contradiction pointed out in 184, it's simply not there. That's the whole point. Spitballing was, historically, winked-at. IOW, people knew it happened, and nobody minded too much. If you got caught, the punishment was fairly minor (compare with gambling, the ultimate sin in baseball). It's not much less ethical than speeding.
My entire point is that what Bonds did was unethical in the simplest sense - he did it because no one was looking, and never would have if he expected to get caught.
Again, to all his defenders here: if what Barry did is just fine, why has he denied it? No one denies using eye surgery, altitude training, or all these other supposedly identical ways of getting a leg up. But, for some reason, Barry denies the obvious on this particular "training method." Oh yeah - because he's "bought into the moralistic BS" - which is why all his defenders here laud him for not giving a shit about sportswriters, for being so strong and self-confident. Except in the wee matter of facing the fucking music.
Again, to all his defenders here: if what Barry did is just fine, why has he denied it?
You're conflating two questions: 1) Is steroid use wrong? 2) Does Barry Bonds think steroid use is wrong?
I suspect the answer to 2) is probably "yes", which reflects poorly on Bonds if he knowingly used steroids. What a lot of people are arguing about, though, is 1).
No one denies using eye surgery, altitude training, or all these other supposedly identical ways of getting a leg up. But, for some reason, Barry denies the obvious on this particular "training method." Oh yeah - because he's "bought into the moralistic BS" - which is why all his defenders here laud him for not giving a shit about sportswriters, for being so strong and self-confident. Except in the wee matter of facing the fucking music.
Since I was the one who brought up the "moralistic BS" line... I don't think Bonds' dismissive treatment of sportswriters has much to do with him being "strong and self-confident". One of the things I appreciate about him is the fact that he's not willing to put on the public face that's required to get along with sportswriters; he's more human than any other athlete I can think of.
One of the things I appreciate about him is the fact that he's not willing to put on the public face that's required to get along with sportswriters; he's more human than any other athlete I can think of.
I'm not sure I'd be willing to go that far, but I do get this sentiment.
That said, I'm pretty dubious about the idea that Barry wrongly thinks he's done the wrong thing. I mean, the man has spent literally his entire life in and around professional baseball. He certainly understands the accepted code of ethics (I reiterate, we're talking ethics here, not morals) of the sport better than any of us here. So if he thinks TGH is out of bounds of fair competition, who the hell are we to tell him otherwise?
191
"... Spitballing was, historically, winked-at. IOW, people knew it happened, and nobody minded too much. ..."
Wasn't this was also true of amphetamine use?
Guys, you know who should have an asterisk? The Beatles. All that mind-altering shit they did that made them write all that extraordinary music from Revolver onward--it's a little bit tainted, don't you think? It's not like they were competing on a level playing field. Bands who weren't doing psychadelics in the late 60s didn't even have a chance. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame should be ashamed.
And those fucking drunk writers? I'm thinking of the lazy Irishmen here, folks -- Joyce, Beckett, O'Neill and the like. Who really wrote Long Day's Journey? Was it O'Neill or Jamison's? It's impossible to really say.
And I don't even want to get into all the college kids who use pep pills to study for three days straight, or to make them more alert for tests. Asterisks for every one of them! The same goes for every academic who can't make it through the morning without feeding their unethical caffeine addiction.
Joe D is a genuine American hero who has never ingested or otherwise consumed mind-altering substances, and whose insights, therefore, remain his and his alone.
I think what we need, guys, is more professional entertainers who are Mormon.
(This is where many of you will try, unsuccessfully, to convince me that Barry Bonds and all other "professional athletes" are not merely professional entertainers, and should be judged by some absurd code of conduct not applicable to every other professional entertainer, ever.)
ome absurd code of conduct
I think you already referenced Mormonism.
Joe, Barry Bonds and all other "professional athletes" are not merely professional entertainers, and should be judged by some absurd code of conduct not applicable to every other professional entertainer, ever.
Barry Bonds and all other "professional athletes" are not merely professional entertainers, they are role models, and I am powerless to raise my children properly while these men—who the government pays to teach children right and wrong—keep setting bad examples. I've had my older son on estrogen supplements for three years to keep his voice from changing and ruining his shot at first alto in the boys' choir, and I blame Sammy Sosa. On the other hand, I don't see my son's pendulous, lactating breasts as a problem, but as an opportunity.
I expected better from you, apo.
I've been off my game. I blame quitting smoking.
195 nails it.
Amen Joe D. Now, where do I send the food to feed all of you starving, skinny actors and writers?
The main problem with Joe's argument, aside from being wrong and full of analogies, is that the Beatles still suck.
Ogged, I hear Jack White is totally straight edge.
Not all of us yearn for theocracy, I-fascist.
To take up the sliver of the serious point you might have made, young rebel, I'll say that the argument isn't even about whether performance enhancing drugs should be legal in professional sports. The argument is whether Barry Bonds used substances that would make him a cheater according to the prevailing ethos of his sport at the time he used them. Answer: yes!
Nope. The "ethos" isn't real, ogged; you've been played. It's a PR campaign. It's advertising. Professional sports are a business. They're the illusion of fair play, when we all know that there are countless businses factors that tip the scales unfairly.
The "ethos" among the players themselves is clearly different, if all those players (and pretty much the whole pro football roster, apparently) are juicing.
185: Well, about 1/2 the people I know who did this sort of thing had serious, and mostly chronic, negative effects. So I don't buy it. By the way, several of those were under medical supervision....
Too cynical for my taste: it's a business, but the players believe in it in other ways. I grant that it's an open question whether the other players think of Bonds as a cheater--an anonymous poll would be nice--but nothing we've said so far changes the fact that a juiced Bonds breaking Aaron's record is a fucking travesty.
It's nothing near as heartbreaking as when The Ultimate Warrior beat Hulk Hogan in the 80s.
to 214 I should add `thought to be from...' of course causation is a tricky thing.
Too cynical for my taste: it's a business, but the players believe in it in other ways.
Is that earnest or o-earnest? As Joe D suggests, there is every reason to believe that top-level athletes attempt to gain advantage in all possible ways, across all sports. That willingness to put winning above other competing values is part of what has allowed them to become top-level athletes.
What Tim said. I read an article in (I think) the NYTimes magazine a few years ago that said something to the effect of, there are two types of professional athletes nowadays: those who use performance enhancing drugs and those who haven't been caught yet.
Not everybody cheats; I'm not sure why some people are so motivated to think that they all do.
218: This argument is beginning to sound awfully libertarianish. "The willingness to put business above other competing values is part of what has allowed top CEOs to become top CEOs; therefore, attempts to institute family-friendly work policies are wrong and, more to the point, foolish, you silly, silly girl."
I can't believe I'm participating in this goddamn thread.
I can't believe I'm participating in this goddamn thread.
Me either. No one's saying that such an attitude is the correct or societally beneficial one; we are (or I am) saying that it's important to recognize the attitude before claiming that Bonds's behavior--whatever it was--diverged dramatically and importantly from the norms that govern people against whom he competes.
Seriously, man, no matter what "ethos" you think he's breaking, the game is simply different than it was in Aaron's day. Aaron didn't have teams of the best doctors in the world monitoring his strength training and his diet and god knows what else. He didn't have the ability to digitally analyze his swing and fix minor imperfections. Technology changes things. Drugs are part of that, whether we've deemed them appropriate or not appropriate. How many over-the-counter painkillers do athletes take? Is it cheating to take a bunch of ibuprofin before a game? If not, why not?
Of course it did. It's still pretty obvious when people are juiced: they become dramatically bigger very quickly, or they have terrible acne, or have a surprising late-career burst of productivity, etc. This just doesn't describe everyone.
So if it wasn't specifically steroids, but some new drug without a reputation, you'd be okay with it?
It's hard to draw clear distinctions, but there are still things that are clearly on the wrong side of the line, and roids are on the wrong side.
And again, I'm not having the performance-enhacing good/bad debate; I'm having the Bonds breaking the record is a fucking travesty debate.
227: You seem to be suggesting that the two can be easily separated; that seems crazy.
I mean, if you want to make the argument that Bonds breaking Aaron's record is a travesty the way some people (not me!) believe the American version of The Office is a fucking travesty, then I'm cool with that. The travesty stakes are pretty low, though, if that's what we're doing.
the game is simply different than it was in Aaron's day
So eliminate the record from the books, or at least retire it. All this equivocation and false analogizing makes my head hurt.
I'm saying that the world is a better place when a likable guy who is above reproach holds the greatest record than when a juiced prick holds it. This seemed kinda obvious to me; I was only surprised that sportswriters seemed to be ignoring this fact, but now I'm surprised that all y'all think it's ok.
when a juiced prick holds it
(ATM)
alternately:
Silly -gg-d, pricks are not prehensile -- unless you're a dolphin.
Baseball isn't a real sport, ogged. I'm sure there are any number of troubling characters associated with various lawn bowling records, and yet, somehow, the Republic survives.
If "likeable" and "prick" are doing any work at all in that sentence, you're a loon. I don't have a strong opinion on Bonds -- to have one, I'd need to know more about where steroid use lands on the "really cheating" to "everyone does it" spectrum. But if hating his getting the record is about anything other than cheating, that's messed up.
LB, you and I have had this "you can't tell anything about public figures" argument before. Needless to say, you remain in the wrong.
233 makes a good point.
Or when an unlikable guy who is not above reproach holds the same record. If Bonds passes 755, I'll be cheering on A-Rod for the next seven or eight years.
I'm sorry; I just can't take this talk of the importance of baseball stats seriously. It's like obsessing over Star Trek episodes. There's a small universe of people who will get into heated debates over the details, but it's really just meaningless fun. The fucking travesty was when Congress wasted its resources holding the Congressional hearings on the subject. I want my fucking money back for that one.
236: No, I mean that even if Bonds is a big ol' meanie and a rotten person, if he hits the most home runs, he's supposed to hold the record. While I'd generally also argue that you really can't tell if public figures are nice or nasty, mostly, this is an area where even if you could, it wouldn't matter.
Carp about cheating if you like, but getting pissed off at a (likely future) record holder because you felt more affection for the guy he beat is screwy.
getting pissed off at a (likely future) record holder because you felt more affection for the guy he beat is screwy
What? This is a pretty normal part of fandom. You want the good guy to win/hold the record, and you sure don't want the bad guy to be the one who beats him. Add that fact that the bad guy is also a cheater and voila! Fucking travesty.
Oh, okay. This is one of those sports fan things that isn't actually supposed to make sense. I'll go back to one of the threads where I understand what's going on.
Plus, it's baseball. Which is, as any fule kno, the ur-boring sport.
I'm sorry; I just can't take this talk of the importance of baseball stats seriously. It's like obsessing over Star Trek episodes.
That's like living in a world without sunshine or the laughter of children. So, so tragic.
220
So what percentage of players do you think used amphetamines?
214 217
Well one of the disadvantages of exaggerating the dangers of drugs like steroids is that cynical people like me start to doubt they are dangerous at all.