The LoHud Mets Blog

Maybe Bud can give Bonds a used Yugo as a gift.

That is one lonely commish for him to incessantly play ‘pocket pool’ the way he does. That’s probably why he stayed away from the game, he had to attend to more pressing matters at hand.

I think Selig is just being Selig. Ya can’t teach an old dog new tricks. It’s like Maris not being honored becasuse the then-commish refused to acknoledge Ruth’s defeated HR total of 60. (and as we all know, if the rules of the 162-game season were changed across the board, then a whole helluva lot more records should have had an asterisk besifdes Maris’ ‘61’). I guess many like Selig have grown accustomed to ol Hank in much the same way. Speaking of Aaron, that was some kinda wide-screen tribute for Bonds last night. Better late than never, I suppose. Seemed like just the other day Hank told reporters that he will not be attending any of Bonds’ games in pursuit of his record. Maybe it’s a little more about his pride and less about whether he disapprovres of Bonds ALLEGED use of controlled substances that kept him away. Got that commish? “Alleged”. Now go find another Robert Hall suit with holes in the pockets—that seems to put a rare smile on your face. (Well, why the hell do ya think he didn’t wnat to stand up?)

Selig handled the situation perfectly. Notice how he did not congratulate Bonds for breaking the all-time HR record, but merely for establishing a “new, career home run record.” Smart. Every time Jose Reyes hits a HR it is a “new, career home run record.” So Selig wasn’t really acknowledging a milestone feat.

I doubt Aaron is jealous of Bonds in any way. Why should he be? Many still consider him to be the HR king even today. I do.

As for Bonds’ usage being merely “alleged,” that is far from the truth. There is a lot of evidence gathered from the BALCO investigation, and he even admitted before the grand jury to taking the stuff. Only he claims he didn’t know what it was. Yeah, right. If you don’t believe Bonds juiced then you’re probably one of those folks who believe the moon landing was staged in a studio or that dinosaurs never existed.

I think because of the Mitchell investigation, Selig knows a lot more about Bonds’ juicing than is out there in the public right now. I think that’s a big reason why he’s been so adamant about not celebrating this sham of an achievement.

Bonds is a jerk, and that goes back to his days with the Pirates…remember when him and Jim Leyland got into it during sring training? He showed no respect for the game then and surely shows none now.

Henry Aaron has more decency in his pinky finger, then Bonds has in his whole entire body…..Barry, just go away, cuz no one cares…

And for the record, as a Mets fan, I will join the millions of baseball fans who will now root for A-Rod to destroy this tainted record!!!!!!

Hopefully, Barry will be indited this fall, along with all the other cheaters…I don’t care who they are, kick them out….What a black mark on the game I love….Mcguire, Sosa, Palmero, Mota, Giambi….just as famous as 8 men out…..LOSERS

Selig is controversial but I think he deserves high grades for the wild card and interleague. Yeah, I know lots of fans hate interleague but most fans seem to vote with their wallet and interleague elevates attendance and revenues. You can’t argue with higher revenues. Fact is, MLB is in better financial shape today than it was before Selig took over.

It’s irrelevant that Bonds never failed an MLB test since strict testing wasn’t in place till about 2005 – after Congress dragged Selig and especially the bonehead players union kicking and screaming toward that direction. What we do have for Bonds is a body of evidence for his juicing that far exceeds what we know about any other player, with the exception of Canseco. To ignore this evidence just because he never failed a MLB test because the players union refused to agree to strict testing before 2005 is being incredibly naive or in denial.

You’re right Steve C, Mota did pay his dues but for some fans he’s still a cheater. I don’t think it really makes sense to say kick him out if he’s paid the price—but from a fan perspective if you really want the Mets to have the best chance to get to the postseason I wouldn’t mind if he suddenly came down with a season-ending injury. The Mets are better off without him.

The state of denial or being naive about something has absolutely nothing to do with the topic at hand. One must be totally consumed by the media soundbytes to fire such stupidity across their keyboard. What it is called is “due process”—a proces that sepatates us from the clueless nations that don’t believe in it. By your reasoning, Bonds should be caned without proof. Yeah, that’s real normal.

LEHE, baseball is not a legal system. We can make judgments about our heroes or villains without evidence having to rise to the same level required in the legal system. Having said that, there is plenty of evidence out there, both direct and circumstantial that points to Bonds having used PEDs heavily. If you want to ignore it, that is of course your right. But why should others?

Further, it’s ironic that a whole book was written about Bonds’ usage and he never sued the authors for libel and slander. I think that says a lot about the validity of what was written in that book.

One thing to note is that the federal government never or rarely indicts the actual users. They go after the dealers. So just saying Bonds was never convicted of using steroids is irrelevant. But what they do care about is perjury. And from all accounts an indictment of Bonds for making false statements about his steroids use before the grand jury is actively being pursued.

JK – I’m not a Bonds apologist. If dealing in over-simplistic rhetoric is your thing, fine. But I don’t personally like Bonds, nor do I think he’s an innocent man, but I value due process and think it should play a role in Bud’s thinking. If you want to irrationally hate Bonds, that’s all you. I don’t care about what you choose to think. It’s your every right to pass judgment if you want to. I only care about what Selig officially does as Commissioner of the game. And it was, for reasons I listed above, a disgrace.

I trust that, since you bring statistical anomaly into question, you must have grave doubts about the legitimacy of Clemens and Randy Johnson’s career numbers as well. Certainly, the shape of their careers is as improbable as Barry’s. I also would be curious what sort of empirical evidence or case studies you have that suggest that greenies have a more benign effect on the game than, say, anabolic steroids. I don’t profess to know how either helps a player, but I certainly allow that they both probably are aids in the long season. Food for thought: this is the first year of strictly enforced amphetamine testing and power numbers are down across the board far more in 2007 than they were immediately following widespread steroid testing. I don’t think this is proof of anything, but it does suggest that we may not know exactly how these PEDs work and what effect they take on the game.

LoveEmHateEm – I appreciate your level-headedness. I wish more people took your approach, but hey, that’s life.

re higher revenues

You say Bud Selig, I say Wall Street.

re the Mitchell Investigation

I apparently have far lower expectations than you do. It looks a lot to me like a PR move signifying nothing. Time will tell, but I won’t be surprised if essentially nothing of value comes out of it.

Lister, first off, I don’t believe I called you a Bonds apologist but there are many of them out there and one posted a link to a silly Sheehan rant the other day. Second, if you think believing what has so far been written about the BALCO investigation and what I see with my own eyes in terms of players’ bodies bulking up and then subsequently going on insane power surges cannot lead to a rational dislike of Bonds and other juicers than I think there is a serious disconnect with you regarding reality or you are just not really a baseball fan.

I do have doubts about Clemens as I think he juiced. And if substantial evidence comes out about Clemens the way it’s already come out with Bonds, then he should be beaten down in the media as much as Bonds and others have. And if he ever does go for an historic record, which I doubt since he’s essentially done, then he will get as much grief as Bonds has. At least from me. Actually he already gets grief from me as I am a Mets fan who hates him for his behavior in 2000 which I think was partly roids rage.

As for Randy Johnson, what was so unusual about his career? Care to be specific?

My personal judgment about greenies is based on circumstantial evidence. From all accounts, greenies have been liberally used for decades. The Mets used them in the 80s. Yet we never saw any power surge anything remotely like what we saw with Sosa, McGwire and Bonds in the space of a few years. Now, since stricter steroids testing is in place, why have all these historic HR paces disappeared? They disappeared way before 2006 which is when they started testing for amphetamines. So you’re wrong about that, this is not the first year of strictly enforced amphetamine testing. They started in 2006.

Show some clear evidence of PEDs fueled performances before the era of steroids and HGH and you might have something to stand on.

Lister, Wall Street has gone up and down during this time. But baseball revenues have gone only up. Second, attendance is up. That’s what helps fuel the revenues.

As for the Mitchell investigation, time will tell. But until then, don’t say Selig only has the court of public opinion to go by. That simply is not true.

Further, if I’m not mistaken, public opinion is split or slightly more against Bonds than for him.

You keep mistaking your own opinion as a fan for what would be a responsible public face to put on if you were Bud Selig. I can’t keep saying it: I don’t want to convince you of anything about Bonds. But, given the facts, (I don’t accept your line of thinking that posits Selig has extra-knowledge because of the limp Mitchell inquiry – not until I see it) Selig was irresponsible. He did more harm to the game than good. He chose to emphasize suspicion rather than fact. He chose to be negative rather than celebratory of the game. And he acted like the old jerk he is when he knew the whole world was watching him play pocket-pool. And, you’re clearly a smart guy. I don’t mean that facetiously, but I don’t understand how you don’t see that the line between Selig and increased revenue is at best a tenuous one. It seems to me a post hoc propter hoc way of thought. It’s no more verifiable than to say that since I’ve started wearing my blue hat every morning, it hasn’t rained: therefore, the my hat is somehow responsible for the weather. There are too many factors at play that have led to increased revenue to pin them on Selig, especially given the quantifiable damage that the horror strike of 94 did to the game. Which leads us back to somewhere interesting and relevant to baseball’s official stance on steroids: that which brought the fans back. I think, largely, it had to do with something going on in St Louis and Chicago…

Lister, no matter what anyone says about what Selig should have done during this episode, it is just opinion. There is no intrinsically right or wrong answer. It is just what seems right to me or to you or to anyone else. So I am disagreeing with you on what Selig should have done.

The fact is, neither you or I know the facts regarding the Mitchell investigation. Both of us can only guess. I think there is a lot more damning evidence in that investigation, you don’t. I think based partly on that evidence, Selig did the right thing. You don’t. We’ll just have to agree to disagree. Because neither of us will know until the results are made public.

What I can’t understand is how you don’t understand there is a clear line between the wild card and sustained interest in baseball in more cities than ever before. The wild card keeps interest up through September in cities where people would have stopped going to watch before its inception. Do you not agree? If you don’t, then I don’t know what to say. Every baseball analyst I’ve read agrees with my line of thinking. They all credit the wild card with this increased/sustained interest.

If you look at attendance during interleague, it exceeds attendance during regular season games. It doesn’t matter if the real rivalries such as the Mets-Yankees account for much of this increase. It’s up. To not see the relation between increased attendance and increased revenues is illogical. Again, if you really believe that there’s no relation, I don’t know what to say.

Selig instituted both the wild card and interleague. He’s done stupid things during his tenure and he’s not perfect.
But give him credit where it’s due.

And your analogy makes no sense because your blue hat has no relation to rain. But attendance has a direct relation to revenues. That’s economics 101.

Sure there are other factors that helped fuel revenues. But you can’t deny the significant role that the wild card, interleague, as well as revenue sharing and the luxury taxes have played. Selig is to be commended for his role in all of these things.

I’ll give you that interleague and wild card have generated revenue, but I don’t think they tell the whole story. I am more than happy to give Selig credit for generating more revnue from those two advents, though I despise Interleague and think it’s a failed experiment in terms of quality of the game. But I think revenue has also often gone up IN SPITE of Selig (cf labor disasters). Similarly, I think any “replacement level” commissioner would have seen revenue gains. I don’t particularly give Selig any special credit, but you are correct about those two specific wrinkles he’s added to the game. And of course there’s no intrinsic right or wrong, but I think, as best as I can tell, that Selig has handled 755* with negativity and suspicion rather than facts and as a cheerleader, and I personally would rather see the latter out of MLB’s Commissioner, for Chrissake.

And my comment about segregation was apropos the idea that all eras are marked by contingencies. Equivalent stats don’t bear the same meaning in different eras. We have no problem recognizing this for stats like average or complete games, so why is it different for homeruns? The homerun has become less special and more common in the last 20 years. I have no problem recognizing Bonds as the statistical homerun champ, but also realizing that what Aaron did may have been more special given the rate at which homers were being hit when he played…

Another thing I agree with Lister on: McGwire and Sosa and Ripken, for that matter, had a LOT more to do with major league attendance than interleague play or the wild card. Most wild card contenders have been a threat to division titles ANYWAY so the excitement probably would have been there anyway. And for every Mets/Yankees game, there’s a Kansas City/Houston game which does nothing.

Let’s face it: the increased attendance had almost DIRECTLY to do with the offensive explosion of the 90’s. Chicks dig the homerun. It’s that simple.

Lunkwill, are you saying Aaron juiced? We have no evidence of that. Steroids were not as plentiful then as they are now. They didn’t have laptops, cellphones, and the internet to help facilitate the spread of steroids. His body didn’t blow up. Nor did his head grow to a grotesque size. There were no dosing schedules nor ex-lovers or teammates pointing fingers at him. So in the absence of any evidence, you’d have to say he was clean.

And if greenies alone helped players hit more HRs, where is the evidence of it? Where are all the players from the 60s through the 80s who hit 60+ HRs??? The lack of them is what you call circumstantial evidence. Why is it illogical to say one form of cheating is worse than another when we in society do that all the time with things like crime. If someone steals a bike, it’s bad but not terrible. But if someone steals the life savings of an old lady, then put him in the slammer!

McGwire, Sosa and Ripken were over by the year 2000 or thereabouts. So if they were responsible for increased attendance, then it would have fallen after their impact had left the game. But it didn’t. It only continued to grow. Therefore there doesn’t seem to be any evidence that they were critical to this growth.

As for wild card contenders being threats in the old days, that’s not always true. Take last year. The wild card kept interest in Philadelphia higher than what it would have been without it. The Mets were already so far ahead that under the old system, Philadelphia would have had no hope. But with the wild card, they were contenders up to the last week. I’m sure this meant a big difference in revenues for them.