Barry Bonds Must Quit

[mb7588a]

In advance, sorry to all Bay-area DUers.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2006/baseball/mlb/03/29/bc.bbo.steroids.ap/index.html?cnn=yes

Barry Bonds has tarnished his own image much too much by breaking the rules of baseball.
I don't know how any serious baseball fan can take this man seriously.
He's not a role model for kids.
He consistently shows scorn in public for his team/fans/the game/commissioner...
He's a proven cheater.
He lends no credibility to atheletes in his game.
He deserves an asterisk next to all of his records.

It does the game of baseball no good to have this man around, and when the biggest story two days before opening day is this bozo for a slugger, the game is in trouble.

[LynneSin]

1. Quit and records removed from the record book

plus removed from Hall-of-Fame voting.

If we're giving out lifetime ban for gamblers then I think the same should be done for ballplayers who bulk up their bodies with illegal substances just so they can break a few records. Say what you will about Pete Rose but all those hits came from skills not doping

[northzax]

2. then we should just wipe the 1992-2004 seasons

off the books.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

6. See my post below

Steroids have been around since 1954. Just because we're starting testing and starting to find out about players using them now doesn't mean they started using them in 1992.

[northzax]

9. well yes, but following the strike season

is when the numbers really started popping. Steroids went from a Palmiero situation (an older player trying to hang on for one more year) to a fact of life. MLB made billions of dollars off of McGwire, Sosa, Bonds and all the juiced sluggers of the past decade, it saved the sport. So if we are going to wipe Bonds, a man who has never been caught, or even accused by someone not selling something, of using steroids, then I think the only fair thing is to set the clock back to 1994. Eliminate all stats, wins, losses, pennants, series titles, everything. take down the banner from Fenway, the five from the Bronx, take away the MVP trophies, the rings, everything. clean the slate and start over.

to blame one player for a pandemic is unfair.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

12. Uhm...

If you think Iraq is bad, just try to take that banner out of Fenway. :grr: :nuke:

[northzax]

13. unless it can be conclusively proven

that no one on the Sox ever used Steroids (since we, collectively, apparently are in guilty until proven innocent mode) the banner comes down.

sorry. good news though, the Yankees will lose 5 banners!

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

14. Okay, but you might have to fight through just about every New Englander

to get the banner.

If you want to try, be my guest. I'd call the UN first to try to get some military assistance. :-)

[mb7588a]

19. steroid talk is bad for the game.

guilty or not, Bonds does nothing for the game, imo.

[northzax]

21. an amazing sentence there:

guilty or not, Bonds does nothing for the game, imo.

actually, he sells tons of tickets, and raises the TV ratings of every game he plays in. people do, in fact, want to watch him.

[Orsino]

16. That would help clean up the problem of steroid use.

Wipe every individual record/title logged in a season when that player tested positive, and wipe any team record/title to which that player was a major contributor.

You'll see fewer players covering for one another.

[mb7588a]

4. You said it even better.

I am just incredibly pissed that this fucking clown is the top story of baseball, year after year. Bigger than the Cinderella Wihte Sox doing the impossible.

[Richard Steele]

3. I agree. If 'sportsmanship' and 'fair play' still actually MEAN anything..

...then Barry needs to be OUTTATHERE.

And his "records" need more than an asterisk,
they need to be ERASED from the books and replaced
with a DU-style "name removed" message.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

5. Just a small note:

http://www.steroid.com/main.php
--snip--
The story of steroids in athletics is now about to begin:

In 1954, a physician named John Ziegler attended the World Weightlifting Championships in Vienna, Austria, as the team's doctor. The Soviets dominated the competition that year, easily breaking several world records and winning gold medals in legions of weight classes. According to anecdotal reports, Ziegler invited the Soviet´s team doctor to a bar and the doctor told him that that his lifters had used testosterone injections as part of their training programs. Whether that story is true or not, ultimately, the Americans returned from the World Championships that year and immediately began their efforts to defeat the Soviets using pharmaceutical enhancement.

As you may have expected, when they returned to the United States, the team doctor began administering straight testosterone to his weightlifters. He also got involved with Ciba, the large pharmaceutical firm, and attempted to synthesize a substance with strength enhancing effects comparable or better than testosterone's. In 1956, Methandrostenolone was created, and given the name "Dianabol".

In the following years, little pink Dianabol tablets found their way into many weightlifter´s training program, fast forward a few years, and in the early 1960s, there was a clear gap between Ziegler´s weightlifters and the rest of the country, and much less of one between them and the Soviets. It was also in the 1960´s that another anabolic steroid had been developed and used to treat short stature in children with Turner Disease syndrome (13)

At this time, physicians around the United States began to take notice of steroids, and numerous studies were performed on athletes taking them, in an effort to stem the tide of athletes attempting to obtain steroids for use in sports. The early studies on steroids clearly showed that anabolic steroids offered no athletic benefit whatsoever, but in retrospect can be said to have several design flaws. The first issue with those studies, and the most glaring one was that the doses were usually very low, too low to really produce much of an effect at all. In addition, it was neither common for these studies to not be double blind nor to be randomized. A double blind study is one where neither the scientists nor the subjects of the study know if they are getting a real medication or a placebo. A randomized study is where the real medicine is randomly dispersed throughout the test group. Finally, in those early studies, nutrition and exercise was not really controlled or standardized. Not long after those flawed studies were concluded, the Physicians Desk Reference boldly (and wrongly) claimed that anabolic steroids were not useful in enhancing athletic performance. Despite this, in 1967, the International Olympic Council banned the use of anabolic steroids and by the mid 1970´s most major sporting organizations had also banned them.
--snip--

As an aside note: Hank Aaron played from 1954 to 1976. I'm not saying he used steroids at all, and I don't believe he did. However, if you're going to put an asterisk next to Bonds' name in the record books without a public and official positive test result, do you not have to put one next to just about every record holder in every sport from 1954 to the time that sport started testing for steroids?

The point is, they've been around for a long, long time. Just because we're starting to learn about baseball players using them now doesn't mean it's just started over the last decade.

[k_jerome]

8. very good post.

the slippery slope here is steep. if you wipe records out, do you also wipe the era's of the pitchers he faced? adjust them? which players do you adjust?

[k_jerome]

7. just out of curiousity, what rule did barry bonds break?

what other players do you feel deserve asterisks next to their records?

the hatred for bonds is truly funny to behold.

[mb7588a]

10. short list:

off the top of my head...

McGuire
Sosa
Giambi
Palmero
Canseco

I don't HATE Barry Bonds, I just don't want him involved in my beloved game anymore

14 MLB players were suspended a total of 140 days (10 days each) last year for violating the policy.
That's a drop in the bucket.

[k_jerome]

22. once again, which rule did barry bonds break.

for that matter which specific rule did the other players on your short list break?

[mb7588a]

11. short list:

off the top of my head...

McGuire
Sosa
Giambi
Palmero
Canseco

I don't HATE Barry Bonds, I just don't want him involved in my beloved game anymore

14 MLB players were suspended a total of 140 days (10 days each) last year for violating the policy.
That's a drop in the bucket.

[jakefrep]

20. Given the lack of testing data...

..until a couple of years ago, how in the hell is anyone supposed to figure who took what and when?

The investigation that MLB has proposed sounds like a fool's errand to me.

[DS1]

15. So, it's okay when Mark Magwuire does it

But the black dude is instantly looking at EVERYTHING he's ever done tossed out and shit on.

hmmmmm

[mb7588a]

17. No i included mcguire on my short list up there.

nothing AT ALL to do with him being black.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

18. I'm no Barry Bonds hater.

I think it's gone WAY too far based on mostly anecdotal evidence. I don't even think he's THAT bad of a guy.

Still, there's a big difference between what's been reported on Bonds and what's been reported on McGwire. The only thing we really know about McGwire was that he used andro - which was legal in all ways at the time. And what little else has come out about him HAS elicited the same reactions. Also, you can't demand him to leave the game because he's already out of it. Bonds isn't.

I think you need to put the race card back into your pocket and save it for the Lance Armstrong debates.

[DS1]

23. How does race bring Lance Armstrong into the picture?

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

25. I'd buy a race argument in the difference between Lance and Barry

But not McGwire and Barry

[k_jerome]

28. well...

we can't have TWO black dudes with more homeruns than the bambino.

[DS1]

29. Good point

Yet, when McGuire was on his home-run streak, looking huge, everyone with a head on their shoulders knew he was juicing.

Even if the particular drug he was on wasn't illegal yet, it was unethical, but nobody cared because some guy was hitting homers left and right.

[Derailer]

24. You people sound like Freepers

with all your (self)rigtheousness and holier-than-thou indignation. Please take your "purist" bullshit elsewhere. The game almost died because of fucking corporate greed (who makes any actual money on sports teams? the goddamn owners, thats who) and when it came back, guess what?

Everybody involved decided to market what people wanted to. And it wasn't 2-1 snoozefests.

So, lessee now, the league, owners, and fans all turn a blind eye to what is *obviously* a long-term and ongoing problem and now you are just aghast that it was going on *wink*behind everyone's back*nudge*

The vitriol I see here makes me halfway suspect it *is* race related

[DS1]

27. Thanks

You'll note that they've dragged out a former congressman to lead the investigation into a single dude.

[k_jerome]

30. its a joke. they cashed in on the long ball era...

that we all tuned in to watch. now a book is written and a couple of corporate sponsors threaten to pull some money and they call in the objective outsider to "get to the bottom of it"

[k_jerome]

26. do you think we should put an asterisk next to babe ruths

numbers because he didn't play against minority players, which given history, were probably better?

[rustydog]

31. I have a novel idea, why not let PARENTS be role models and

let athletes play their over rated games. he is a friggin'ball player...Why not admire someone else like Mom and Dad for putting food on the table 7 days a week, working even when they are sick because unlike pampered sports "heroes" parents have to produce to get their paycheck.

You are talking about grown men hitting a little ball thrown at them with a stick and more men running after the ball...it is a friggin' game, a distraction to the working-class people and a way for teh wealthy to make more money off of the working-class.

Don't get me wrong, i love watching baseball..I just don't put jocks on a pedestal and tell my kids they are what we all have to look up to. they are playing a schoolyard game.

Why not admire the teacher, police officer, paramedic, firefighter, accountant, etc..people who work for a living.