One of the best sportswriters, Joe Posnanski, recently got into a debate with Bob Costas about Barry Bonds as one of the best players of all time. As a Bay Area native I followed the Giants and A’s after the whole steroid-fueled home run chase of 1998 (Sammy Sosa being the definitive reason why I’m a Cubs fan, bad choice, I know) and so I was pretty familiar with what Bonds did.
I encourage you all to check out the article, where Joe Poz does his regular schtick and pulls out some numbers that show that Bonds really does deserve to be put in the pantheon of baseball awesomeness, steroids or no. As a newly minted baseball fan since 1998, I pretty much knew that steroids were rampant in baseball, but I didn’t care…it was still tons of fun to watch Bonds beat the hell out of baseballs and put the fear of God into opposing pitchers.
Comments
Posnanski is awesome. I agree with you 100%. I just don’t care about steroids. 1) this isn’t the first time players have done something to gain an edge and it won’t be the last. 2) in my life, baseball has never been more exciting than it was from 1998 to 2001.
mb21Quote Reply
[quote name=mb21]Posnanski is awesome. I agree with you 100%. I just don’t care about steroids. 1) this isn’t the first time players have done something to gain an edge and it won’t be the last. 2) in my life, baseball has never been more exciting than it was from 1998 to 2001.[/quote]I was thinking about this today. I pretty much quit watching baseball for about 3 years and then Sammy got me interested in it again.
binkyQuote Reply
Sammy = awesome. I wish he was treated better by Cubs fans, but whatcha gonna do.
Rice CubeQuote Reply
My only concern about steroids is kids, whose bodies are changing already, pumping whatever they can get soem quack to sell them into themselves unsupervised in secret. Lots of room for lots to go wrong there. But banning steroids across the board only helps to make the situations that young users encounter them in more risky. So I don’t really know how to address that, or the fact that kids who can afford them then have some small advantage (not nearly what everyone thinks) over kids who can’t. Even if that advantage is just healing a little more quickly, that’s one more advantage to the kids who already have advantages in terms of access to equipment, facilities, training, and time.
I have no problem whatsoever with pro athletes making a rational calculus regarding whether they should or should not pursue this as a way of gaining an advantage over other pro athletes who realistically have the same access and can take them under the supervision of a physician and trainer, (even if that physician and trainer have to be paid off under the current system). No problem whatsoever. The whole idea that not doing steroids is “natural” is absurd. What the fuck does “natural” mean in a game where pitchers regularly, i mean regularly, have part of their knee removed and stuck in their elbow? What the fuck is “natural” about that? If that was natural then we’d ALL be born with knees on our elbows and our heads up our asses, and not just sportswriters, broadcasters, bitter old players and MLB officials.
I guess what I’m saying is that steroids should be subject to a tightly enforced, zero-tolerance draconian ban in amateur athletics, and pretty much mandatory in pro sports.
UrkQuote Reply
From what I’ve read over the years, it appears the parents are more actively involved in getting their child access to such things as HGH and even steroids. No matter what MLB does, that’s not going to stop. There’s not even money for regular testing in amateur sports so there’s really not a lot that can be done.
mb21Quote Reply
One of the things I was thinking about is that stuff like spitballs and scuffing the ball is expressly banned by the official rules, whereas supplements and steroids such as androstenedione (which McGwire used) were legal or at least MLB didn’t care. So it comes off as a bit of a double standard and also holier-than-thou when they allow spitballers into the Hall of Fame but say steroid users shouldn’t be…both are cheating, but one is forbidden by the rules and the other was not for a very long time.
Rice CubeQuote Reply