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While it's quite popular these days to bad mouth Bonds and Sosa and McGwire, I think a lot of people forget how dismal baseball was looking after the cancellation of the 1994 World Series. At that time, the NBA was on the rise, the NFL was rock solid, and even hockey was enjoying new popularity with Gretzky and Lemieux.

That home run race in 1998 brought MLB back from the dark, and even though we now know much more than we did then, it strikes me as a disgrace the way baseball insiders like Selig have allowed a few of those guys to shoulder the entire blame.

The worst development in sports isn't PEDs or expansion or tinkering with the playoffs, but it's the use of public funds for sports stadiums. I'm not sure where it started, but we haven't even begun to experience the problems that will bring. Once the government gets their foot in the door in any industry, you can be sure trouble is coming. Don't know if you can blame that on Selig, though.

I like McGwire, but never really Barry Bonds.

I hate what they do with the stadiums. They replace them after just 25-30 years. Idon’t mind ifthe city helps build the infrastructure support the stadium, or even donates land, but footing the bill for the construction of it really angers me.

The worst development in sports isn't PEDs or expansion or tinkering with the playoffs, but it's the use of public funds for sports stadiums. I'm not sure where it started, but we haven't even begun to experience the problems that will bring.

It actually began with Milwaukee County Stadium, built for the old-old Milwaukee Brewers minor league team. The park was the first sports stadium in the country to be built entirely with "public funds."

The irony: the old Brewers never got to play there---the park was ready in 1953 . . . just in time for the Boston Braves' arrival. And the Braves weren't the first major league team to cast eyes on the Milwaukee park: Bill Veeck hoped to move the St. Louis Browns there a year before the Braves moved, but Veeck was blocked.

Another irony: moving the Browns to Milwaukee would have meant returning the franchise to their city of origin. Where they had been known, from 1894 through 1901, as the Milwaukee Brewers! Those Brewers had been an ancient Western League franchise and one of the two not to fold when, in 1901, the Western League declared itself a second major league: the American League.