Let's Go Bonds Bashing - Wheeee!
Today a top news story (note: news, not sports) on my drive-time radio was essentially this:
"Yesterday Barry Bonds started the season with the Giants on the road and he really, really got booed."
Thuh end.
Nothing about how he did, what the final score was, or even really what he got booed for. I presume by now we're all supposed to know what an ugly stinking Nazi Communist bunny-licker baby-rapist Satan-worshipper he is.
Since the release of the tell-all tome "Game of Shadows," describing every private injectatory moment of the greatest ballplayer of our day, Bonds has been excoriated, and if I'm to believe the reasons why this is the case, they are far from compelling.
Oh, but he clearly used steroids.
Now I'll say right up front that I don't necessarily condone the use of steroids. But then I don't condone drinking alcohol or coffee. So on my take all athletes who get juiced in any of these ways should get whupped, too.
But they don't. Only Bonds does.
The reason the sports press skewers him so mercilessly is actually has nothing to do with the steroids, though it makes a spiffy excuse.
It has everything to do with Bonds (a) making a fine case for being the greatest player ever and (b) his being particularly surly and boorish.
These two things going together are critical. Sports media guys want their heroes to have some redeeming values, even if they have to tweak them a bit. Ruth and Mantle were never mistaken for choirboys (I know, I know, quite the cliche, but whatever), but at least they smiled every once in a while. Bonds is seen as having no such virtue, and when a steroids rap whacks him across the broadside, it's open season.
I could bring up all kinds of issues here, but the best take on it all is at my friend's terrific Giants blog, EEEEEE! (He's written some awesome stuff on the Bonds issue, peek around a bit there and on his site and you'll find it.)
All I want to say here how utterly silly it is for anyone to even remotely think about putting asterisks next to any of Bonds records. First of all, what are they going to say with the asterisk? "We think the player attaining these records was on steroids, so, ummmm, yeah."
Secondly of all, why stop with Bonds? Why not go into the books and look at all the players who were thought to have been on steroids? And not just steroids, what about other stuff that enhances one's play? Protein drinks? Laser eye surgery? Full performance state-of-the-art workout regiment? Frequent use of pot? Which player is guiltless?
I generally don't like using the "Everyone does it" argument because it makes it seem like I'm making an apologetic for doing x or y "bad" thing. But at what point do we say this or that record must receive extra scrutiny because of the possibility--even certainty that some player or players did something unusual to give them an "unfair" advantage?
Really, if that were the case, really, we'd have to put asterisks by every single world championship in history because there certainly were things done by some players during the course of each season that got them some edge that got them that key play that got them that key win that got them that pennant on the way to the title. For cryin' out loud you could even point to some plainly obvious ones. Were Ty Cobb's spikes just not filed sharply enough-- a practice not so much for the dirt on the basepaths but the flesh of the opponents-- to earn an asterisk next to the Tigers' pennants from '07 to '09?
So every time I read or hear about some offended sports writer or baseball pundit decry Bonds' steroid use I only think of what a hypocrite he is because he flatly won't say why he's so steamed. He just hates the guy, again because he's so damn good, and Bonds doesn't particularly like him, plain and simple.
Sadly there are just as many hypocritical, sycophantic fans who go right along with the foolishness.
The brazen sports media/average fan hypocrisy is not merely because of their duplicity, but it is for their abjectly willful failure to address and renounce the real problem in major league baseball. For that, look here.
To see why I have such a passion for baseball and the Giants, take a peek here.
"Yesterday Barry Bonds started the season with the Giants on the road and he really, really got booed."
Thuh end.
Nothing about how he did, what the final score was, or even really what he got booed for. I presume by now we're all supposed to know what an ugly stinking Nazi Communist bunny-licker baby-rapist Satan-worshipper he is.
Since the release of the tell-all tome "Game of Shadows," describing every private injectatory moment of the greatest ballplayer of our day, Bonds has been excoriated, and if I'm to believe the reasons why this is the case, they are far from compelling.
Oh, but he clearly used steroids.
Now I'll say right up front that I don't necessarily condone the use of steroids. But then I don't condone drinking alcohol or coffee. So on my take all athletes who get juiced in any of these ways should get whupped, too.
But they don't. Only Bonds does.
The reason the sports press skewers him so mercilessly is actually has nothing to do with the steroids, though it makes a spiffy excuse.
It has everything to do with Bonds (a) making a fine case for being the greatest player ever and (b) his being particularly surly and boorish.
These two things going together are critical. Sports media guys want their heroes to have some redeeming values, even if they have to tweak them a bit. Ruth and Mantle were never mistaken for choirboys (I know, I know, quite the cliche, but whatever), but at least they smiled every once in a while. Bonds is seen as having no such virtue, and when a steroids rap whacks him across the broadside, it's open season.
I could bring up all kinds of issues here, but the best take on it all is at my friend's terrific Giants blog, EEEEEE! (He's written some awesome stuff on the Bonds issue, peek around a bit there and on his site and you'll find it.)
All I want to say here how utterly silly it is for anyone to even remotely think about putting asterisks next to any of Bonds records. First of all, what are they going to say with the asterisk? "We think the player attaining these records was on steroids, so, ummmm, yeah."
Secondly of all, why stop with Bonds? Why not go into the books and look at all the players who were thought to have been on steroids? And not just steroids, what about other stuff that enhances one's play? Protein drinks? Laser eye surgery? Full performance state-of-the-art workout regiment? Frequent use of pot? Which player is guiltless?
I generally don't like using the "Everyone does it" argument because it makes it seem like I'm making an apologetic for doing x or y "bad" thing. But at what point do we say this or that record must receive extra scrutiny because of the possibility--even certainty that some player or players did something unusual to give them an "unfair" advantage?
Really, if that were the case, really, we'd have to put asterisks by every single world championship in history because there certainly were things done by some players during the course of each season that got them some edge that got them that key play that got them that key win that got them that pennant on the way to the title. For cryin' out loud you could even point to some plainly obvious ones. Were Ty Cobb's spikes just not filed sharply enough-- a practice not so much for the dirt on the basepaths but the flesh of the opponents-- to earn an asterisk next to the Tigers' pennants from '07 to '09?
So every time I read or hear about some offended sports writer or baseball pundit decry Bonds' steroid use I only think of what a hypocrite he is because he flatly won't say why he's so steamed. He just hates the guy, again because he's so damn good, and Bonds doesn't particularly like him, plain and simple.
Sadly there are just as many hypocritical, sycophantic fans who go right along with the foolishness.
The brazen sports media/average fan hypocrisy is not merely because of their duplicity, but it is for their abjectly willful failure to address and renounce the real problem in major league baseball. For that, look here.
To see why I have such a passion for baseball and the Giants, take a peek here.
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