As long as I can remember I have always loved baseball. I care about the sport. I think sometimes more than some of the people involved because part of me still recognizes the game within the business.
When it is right, it is beautiful.
There is passion, such as I saw last autumn during the Mets’ playoff run. There is joy, as I saw in David Wright’s smile the night they swept the Dodgers. There is untold disappointment as I saw in his eyes the night the season ended.
I am sad for the sport tonight.
I channel surfed when I came back from dinner and saw Barry Bonds hit a baseball over the fence in San Diego. I knew the game was on, but refused to watch. Doing so, I thought, would be a form of support.
I am glad the game was on TV late on a Saturday night when the ratings would be down.
I will always believe the owners turned their backs on steroids so they could fill the seats of their stadiums with fans to watch the “home run” hitters.
Their greed gave tacit approval first to Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, and then to Bonds. And, let’s not give any kudos to the Players Association because its priority should be the health of its members.
I know some of you will blame the media, saying why didn’t we do something? Well, some in the. print media tried to get word out. Those in TV did not because they are in bed with MLB. The reason the issue is in the forefront now is because of newspapers.
In my heart I am convinced Bonds cheated. I also believe MLB wasn’t willing to go through the ugliness of a legal clash with Bonds. I believe Bud Selig thinks Bonds used steroids, but didn’t have the stomach to go after him the way the sport went after Pete Rose.
Bonds has hit 755 baseballs over the walls of major league stadiums. But, I refuse to call them home runs, and I know you know what I mean.
As far as I am concerned, Hank Aaron is the all-time leader. Bonds will always have an asterisk by his name and will not get my Hall of Fame vote.
I still feel passion for the game itself, but tonight I feel disappointment, sadness and anger for the sport that is major league baseball.
A record wasn’t tied tonight, it was just tainted.
And, tonight baseball isn’t right. Tonight it isn’t beautiful.
21 Comments
Funny, when Hank Aaron hit his 755th homer, he didn’t stand there watching it like a jerk.
John, thanks for taking a stand. Some journalists, like Jayson Stark, prefer to bury their heads in the sand on this issue. I completely agree with you and think this HR record is a sham and a shame.
It’s sad on many levels, not just because it’s a phony record now, but also because Bonds was already a great player and a Hall of Famer before he used PEDs. He didn’t have to cheat to be remembered with the greats. Well he took a chance with steroids and other PEDs and he lost and got caught, and so now he will be remembered as one of the game’s biggest cheats. A huge portion of the public, if not most, think of him now as one of the game’s bad guys, alongside other rogues like Pete Rose.
As for who is to blame, I think every party is to blame including the media. Not you personally of course, but the print media as well as the broadcasters. Why didn’t they investigate the cheaters more? I don’t know if it’s true that they really tried. How? Just doing an SI story with some Ken Caminiti quotes is not good enough. TJ Quinn and others at the Daily News are the only NY area journalists that I know of who seem to be doing some investigative journalism now on this issue. Where are the others?
John – Thank you for speaking out for all of us who still love the game.
Well said, John. I wish there were more journalists like you out there willing to speak their mind on the issue.
-SR
Fair point but we can also point to the counterparts in the NFL who all bury their heads in that sand about dog killers whose bodies make Bonds look like Pee Wee Herman. How many people in this country want to celebrate Lance Armstrong and ignore his long list of suspected cheating and deserting his family to shack up with Sheryl Crow (does he use one sheet of toilet paper)? How appropriate this happened in California, whose twice-elected governor and member of the Kennedy family is a former steroid user turned actor turned head of President’s Council on Physical Fitness (hope I slammed both parties here).
Kind of ironic that Aaron’s 715th was caught by pitcher Tom House who admits now he was juicing in 1974. House later became pitching coach of Bobby Valentine’s Texas Rangers that had Jose Canseco, Ivan Rodriguez, Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro. I have no idea where the team owner is now.
Well, maybe this means Selig will attend the game tonight at Wrigley and honor Glavine. He has no excuse now not to be there.
DG, personally I don’t care about football as I don’t follow it. Nor do I care about bicycle racing. And I doubt many even know how many Tours Armstrong has won. Nor do I care about the personal life of a bicycle racer which has nothing to do with PEDs. Nor do I care about a bodybuilder turned actor turned politician. Nor do I care about Tom House unless he said he gave PEDs to Aaron. This is an oversimplification as I think all sports should be clean. But I am a baseball fan first of all and to me the records are part of what makes the game pretty special so the Bonds “feat” is particularly troublesome. Now is not the time to recount every PEDs transgression in the history of sports or this blog would be longer than Websters unabridged dictionary.
Thank you, John, for speaking so eloquently on this very sad subject—sad for those of us who love the game and can’t abide the cheating. In my mind as well, the home run king is still Hank Aaron and the single season record-holder is Roger Maris.
While it’s easy to blame the owners, who turned a blind eye toward the steroid usage in their quest to drive up revenues, the era also implicates the media as knowing pawns in the owners’ marketing scheme. The HR records went through the roof, and there wasn’t one sportwriter putting out a book on what he’d seen from inside the belly of the beast. Instead, they rolled over and went along with the bullshit pageantry of the McGwire/Sosa chase, pretending it was somehow as authentic as Mantle/Maris.
To me, the real losers in this equation—beyond, of course, the fans, who’ve been emotionally invested in what appears to be something of a sham—is the media, who are no longer considered objective watchdogs, but are instead being exposed for being part and parcel of the overall commerce of the industry.
Whether it be phony justifications for war or phony HR records, the media can’t sit by idly—and then later throw up its arms and feign ignorance or, worse, deny culpability. You can’t be both an accomplice and innocent—and it’s time for the media to take responsibility for its own willful participation in conscious efforts to dupe the public.
As for feelings of disappointment regarding last night, I would quote Bob Dylan: “Now ain’t the time for your tears.”
Completely agree. To me, Hank Aaron will remain the HR leader. That cheater in SF does not deserve that record. He tainted the game.
What?! I respect you as a journalist and you give terrific insight. But for you to say you wouldn’t vote him into the Hall of Fame tells me you dont deserve to have a vote. Yea, he probably took steroids, but he was a Hall of Famer before that. Not to mention, he has hit some of those HRs off of cheaters. Didnt Clay Hensley get busted for juicing?
JD…Thanks for writing what SO many of us believe and feel.
When he’s indicted, I hope baseball will erase his name from the books.
Bonds should be in one book: the Guinness Book of Records for the oldest person to have his head and feet grow.
First off, it wasn’t the newsmedia that got this story going, it was the players themselves, mainly Jose Canseco, who wrote a book that basically everyone slammed, but that book in itself opened the world to what was really going on and made people really stop and realize what was going on. As for Barry, whatever, he’s one of many. STeroids has tainted the entire generation. A record is just part of that. This “hallowed record” stuff means nothing to me, because thats not what its about. Its about the game, and it was the game itself that cheated its fans by allowing steroids to run rampant. Back to Bonds, I’m sorry I must diagree but there is no way he’s not a hall of famer. The hall of fame is for the best players in the game, the very best. That’s exactly what Bonds is, steroids or no steroids, it really doesn’t matter, he simply is one of the greatest talents the game has ever seen. I really don’t care how many HRs he hit. If he finished with 550, he’s still a 1st ballot HOFer.
and another thing, the point about Lance Armstrong, its perfect. Lance has been celebrated for yeras in this country as a true hero, athlete, whatever, what a guy you know? Yet there have been suspicions and small amounts of proof about his doping for years, which NEVER have gone away. Yet, here’s Bonds, same exact thing. Small amounts of proof, just a lot of suspision, and he’s vilified.
An interesting question that I have: If the Mets had won the World Series last season and let’s say Guillermo Mota would have gotten some key outs on the way to accomplishing that, what would the response to a Mets World Series victory be? Would Major League Baseball have to act? How could they have penalized the team? This has bothered me every since Guillermo Mota got caught, because if the Mets had won, they would forever be the championship team with the juiced reliever who got caught. I just want things to be legit.
Oh puh-lease. This kind of stuff hurts the game. So what if Barry Bonds is a jerk and used steroids. It’s not magic. Physical supplements have always been part of the game. Maybe part of the reason Bonds is such a jerk is because he is so talented? Steroids didn’t help him hit home runs. What helped him was the best left-handed swing since Babe Ruth and the best strike-zone judgment of any hitter, ever. You know who else is using steroids? Neifi Perez.
What you baseball writers and MLB are doing to the game with your phony rhetorical moral stance is appalling. Bonds is just one player. Take off your uppity pants and get the f*** over it. Seriously. You’re not helping anyone.
“Steroids didn’t help him hit home runs.”
There’s a guy in Philly who’s done an analysis of Bonds’ home runs. Supposedly, before 1999 he had hit something like 5 or 10 of them that went 450 feet or more; since then, he’s hit something like 25-30 of that distance.
Perhaps all aging sluggers get an extra 50-75 feet on their flyballs and we’re just too busy with phony rhetorical stances to see it, eh? Or, maybe his sweet lefty swing just got better when he turned 35? Or, maybe it was his strike-zone judgment that put the extra 75 feet on?
metsfan: Pete Rose was a Hall of Famer before he gambled, but his subsequent behavior disqualified him from consideration for that honor. For the same reason, I think many journalists won’t vote for Bonds, and if I could vote, I wouldn’t vote for him either. That’s part of the consequences one has to face when you decide to cheat. Baseball records may not be important to some but they are to many.
As for Lance Armstrong, what “small amounts of proof” exist? It’s ludicrous to equate mere allegations against Armstrong with the proof that does exist against Bonds. For Bonds, there are BALCO dosing schedules, sworn testimony before grand juries, and even an admission from Bonds himself—only he says he didn’t know it was steroids at the time. Yeah, right. He thought it was flax seed oil? So there is a lot more evidence on Bonds than what there is on Armstrong.
Besides, people just don’t care about cycling the way they care about baseball and its records. Should we be crying over bodybuilding or weightlifting records?
DJ: You bring up an interesting point. I don’t know what MLB would have done, but I think if the Mets had won the WS and Mota had played a big role, I would view it as tainted. I wouldn’t be proud of it at all.
Blastings: How do you know steroids didn’t help Bonds hit HRs? Don’t you find it curious that before the age of 35 and before he blew up to look like the Hulk, the most HRs he ever hit in a season was 46? And that was when he was in his prime! Or that similar bulking by such players as McGwire, Sosa, and Boone went hand in hand with a drastic increase in HRs? Many fans have no problem putting 2 + 2 together, but I guess to Bonds’ fans, it’s more convenient to look the other way. And, by the way, Neifi Perez did not test positive for steroids. He got caught for using amphetamines.
Certainly steroids helped Bonds with his late-career improvement. That’s not enough to spoil my enjoyment of his home runs and baseball in general, however. It’s a sad day for baseball because of the position the league has decided to take on it. It’s not a sad day because one roided guy amongst many has hit a historic home run.
As far as Bonds in the Hall, to those who say he was a Hall of Famer before he cheated, I ask, How do you know when he started cheating? We’ll never know.
As far as the record, what was more disgraceful than Bonds breaking the record was the treatment Aaron received when he broke the record. A man with a perfectly clean record was shunned by the Commissioner (Bowie Kuhn I believe) because he was a Black man breaking the most cherished record in sport. And the same commissioner demanded the Braves play him in Cinncinnatti hoping he would break the record on the road. We hate the Braves because they are in our division, but they ignored the Commissioner and sat Aaron down. We can’t take away the Homers, just as we can’t take away Palmeiro’s 3000 hits or Mota’s pitching for the Mets. But we don’t have to cheer or support it either.
PS: This was the best set of write-ups on this blog that I can remember. Thanks JD for starting it.
John,
I completely agree.
DG,
Thanks for pointing out that it is not baseball.
But to go beyond that it is the society we live in. For as we see on this forum there are many who do not believe this to be a problem at all.
Dave