Posted on 04/13/2011 2:51:17 PM PDT by Husker
His punishment should be to repay every little kid who paid a premium for his baseball cards back in the 90’s.
No, Im not one of them, just know about a few...
“Here’s an idea. Why don’t you try hitting a 95 mph fastball, with or without steroids. When your legs give out from underneath you because you couldn’t even see the ball, let alone get around on one to even foul it off, talk to me about Bonds being nothing without steroids. He was, for good reason having nothing to do with steroids, the best hitter the game has ever seen. He was intentionally walked with the bases loaded, and that says it all. Go Giants!”
Sorry that is called Cheating and the bastard should be banned from ever being near the game.
I personally don’t view it as cheating.
Steroids were not illegal in baseball at the time, and a large number of players were using them.
I regret that such hallowed records were tarnished, but baseball should be judged by eras. The game is so different than it was 50 years ago. Different equipment, different stadiums and dimensions.
Ted Williams and Joe Dimaggio probably would have had 100 additional homers had the played for opposite teams because of the stadiums. Baseball stats are subjective.
Tony Gwynn, Robeto Clemente and Pete Rose might all have something to say about that - and that's just in the REALLY modern era.
You start talking about Ted William, DiMagio, Cobb and a host of others, I don't know if Bonds is even in the same conversation.
Plus, without the 'roids, I wonder how many of his homers are warning track outs, at best.
You and I have an entirely opposite appreciation of the game of baseball.
Re #12:
I am a Cardinals fan. I was a big McGwire fan. To this day I think he’s a good man who made a big mistake. But you can’t give in on this. One can’t say, “He’s sorry so lets give him a pass”. So no, McGwire should not get in. Clemens (who I personally don’t like) would have been a great pitcher without the PED’s but there is strong evidence he cheated. He should not go into the HOF either.
“According to the government’s case against Bonds, he started using in 1998. That’s certainly when his body underwent a big change.
By that point, he’d had six seasons of batting 30 or more homeruns, was a five-time Golden glove winner, seven-time Silver Slugger winner,seven-time all-Star, and won the MVP award three times.”
Apparently he is NOT right in the head and threw that away!
And he probably hit a lot of his homeruns against pitchers who were also juiced up, so it evens out.
I agree. You cannot like to a grand jury under any circumstances. I suppose the only real question is why he was before a grand jury in the first place.
In Clinton’s case, we know that he lied to try to avoid losing a lawsuit. But in this case, it was, if I recall correctly, more of a fishing expedition.
The sad part of all this is that Bonds didn’t need to cheat. He was a great player regardless.
I've tried it, and it's nearly impossible. Bonds was indeed one of the greatest, if not the greatest hitter ever. It's a shame he felt he had to cheat, because he was already great.
That was Scooter Libby’s mistake. There was a young female attorney that was subpoenaed by a Congressional committee and she asserted her 5th Amendment right even though by most accounts, she had done nothing wrong.
She simple was not going to allow herself to risk being caught in a trap by an unethical prosecutor. She resigned her position, but she never had to hire an attorney and run up huge lawyer fees.
That is one attorney smart enough know better than to talk to the feds.
I understand your sentiment and you’re perfectly consistent, but the question was ‘do you think they will —?’, not ‘do you think they should —?’.
I love it when the purists chime in, as if baseball was ever a pure sport.
Baseball IS the cheaters game.
There has always been gambling, sign stealing, doctoring the ball, taking uppers, corking bats, using pine-tar, etc. And that was all after the game finally integrated minorities, marginalizing every pre-1947 record.
So when I say I enjoyed watching Bonds while he was on roids, I just mean that it was cool to see someone so dominant that he either had to be walked or he hit a homerun. I’m sure most of the pitchers he faced were roided up, too.
Bonds was definitely not the greatest hitter ever, but he is one of the best, and certainly a Hall of Famer, pre-juicing.
I don’t think they will (McGwire has been on the ballot for five years now and isn’t even close to getting in). And I don’t think they should.
Eventually McGwire and all the other roid guys will be in. But it’ll take a while, right now the voters are still mostly old school guys that consider roids a big deal. But the younger crowd of sports writers is showing a willingness to accept “the steroid era” as just part of the game, when they take over the voting (which eventually they must do as old voters die and retire) then all the roid guys will be in.
Bingo.
If MLB had gotten on top of the PED problem right away, Barry may have never felt the pressure to juice up.
Barry Bonds is an A-hole, but is was a great player on the field even before the steroid era, and he certainly was not one of the first to start juicing.
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