Its Official - Baseball to Investigate Bonds

[Guest Edgy DC]

]What I do know is that to say what Bonds is going through will be 100 times worse than Aaron is just silly.

He's a scholar. I'm sure this is a research-based statement.

[Guest sharpie]

Nice that it came out to such a round number, too.

[Centerfield]

As an aside, what do you do when you're the president of the university and one of your professors comes out and says something like this? Try to distance yourself from it? Support him even though you don't agree? Close your eyes and hope it goes away?

The poor guy is thinking to himself "Damn, I knew he was a little goofy when I appointed him director but I never thought he'd say anything this dumb."

[Guest Edgy DC]

"Tom, I understand that you to have controversial positions. Many I agree with, many I do not, and this university is certainly open to disagreement. But express them like a scholar and not an overheated prophet. Your manner embarasses the university and the state."

The guy is 34 years old!

http://www.ithaca.edu/sportmanagementandmedia/jackjohnson/Moore.html

[Frayed Knot]

"As an aside, what do you do when you're the president of the university and one of your professors comes out and says something like this?"

Nothing. University presidents have even less control over their professors than Bud Selig has over the player's union.



"Is race the reason Bonds is scrutinized? ... Is race a factor? "

The main reason Bonds is being more scrutinized than the others is that he's the one approaching hallowed records. That he also seems to be the most guilty and the biggest asshole certainly adds to it.

[Guest Edgy DC]

I think that

"Most guilty"="Jose Canseco" and "Jose Canseco"="Most Guilty"

Caminiti also seems high onon that list.

Adn I'm sure there can and wil be an argument that all the documentation en el mundo does not amoount to a single failed test, so, by that logic, "Matt Lawton's Guilt" > "Barry Bonds' Guilt"

[Zvon]

]"White America doesn't want him to (pass) Babe Ruth and is doing everything they can to stop him," says Leonard Moore, director of African and African-American Studies at Louisiana State University. "America hasn't had a white hope since the retirement of (NBA star) Larry Bird, and once Bonds passes Ruth, there's nothing that will make (Ruth) unique, and they're scared. And I'm scared for Bonds. "I think what he'll go through will be 100 times worse than what Aaron went through" when he surpassed Ruth in 1974. "I pray for him every night."

---ohNoYouDi-ent!

This is a whole lot a bullshit. This Moore guys a mooron.
Its people like that who will always keep racism alive and kicking.

This has nothing to do with black and white, aside from black numbers on a white page.

[Guest Edgy DC]

I pray for Zvon every night.

[Zvon]

silverdsl wrote: That said, what exactly is MLB going to do at the conclusion of this investigation? And how long is it going to take? I'd guess that Mitchell won't be able to wrap this up in just a few months so Bonds might be retired before there is a final report.

For people guilty of juicing before 2003, probly nothing except the public disclosure.
After 2003, whatever the established punishments that were in place thru MLB and the players union.

But this list they will end up with - this is no list a player wants to be on.

[metirish]

How Barry Bonds became the melon-head he is today, and why baseball is to blame.

[Guest Edgy DC]

While I'm as put off by the muscling up of baseball as anyone, don't you think such articles fail to distinguish between subconsious and conscious choices, planned and unplanned directions, negect and agency, on behalf of Major League Baseball?

Sure baseball is largely complicit. But they don't seem to care.to make a real case beyond...

The authors speculatively note that the federal prosecutor in charge of the case against BALCO—the doping lab used by Bonds—is a conservative who would like to be a federal judge; and that George Bush, the man who would appoint him, is a former owner of a Major League team. (True, Bush raised the issue of steroids, and sternly, in his State of the Union; but in the end, Bush is a frat boy by nature. It is not hard to imagine some from his former fraternity of owners calling in a little leniency.) However the logs eventually got rolled, the federal investigation into BALCO netted only token sentences, and the cheating athletes were never publicly identified.

This is where progressive journalism too often shirks its responsibility. If we name the right bogeyman, who cares about getting the facts straight?

That last sentence suggests, in fact, that the athletes were protected, not thrown to the wolves to protect the real guilty parties at MLB, as the article otherwise seems to want the reader to believe.

[Guest silverdsl]

Zvon wrote: But this list they will end up with - this is no list a player wants to be on.

Well, if this investigation goes no deeper than Balco it's likely we already know which players are going to be on the list - Bonds, Giambi and Sheffield. I wish I had more confidence but I'm thinking that we might not know any more about the use of performance enhancers by players and the end of this investigation than we do now.

[Guest Edgy DC]

]Well, if this investigation goes no deeper than Balco it's likely we already know which players are going to be on the list - Bonds, Giambi and Sheffield.

And Marvin Bernard!

[metirish]

Jon Heyman brings up some interesting points about HGH, I didn't know MLB does not test for it.

Jon Heyman writes a good column

[Frayed Knot]

One good sign about SNY is that they went to a split screen during their baseball telecast on Thursday to cover the Bud Selig press conference (as did ESPN) while YES (showing a NYY game at the time) and MSG (showing a re-run Knick game) did not.

Not a big deal but at least a sign they don't intend to be a sweep-it-under-the-rug kind of station.

[Guest Bret Sabermetric]

I thought I was cheap because I re-use my grocery bags as garbage bags.

[Guest Iubitul]

Frayed Knot wrote: One good sign about SNY is that they went to a split screen during their baseball telecast on Thursday to cover the Bud Selig press conference (as did ESPN) while YES (showing a NYY game at the time) and MSG (showing a re-run Knick game) did not. Not a big deal but at least a sign they don't intend to be a sweep-it-under-the-rug kind of station.

To be completely honest, we don't know how SNY would handle it if two high profile Mets were major players in this story - However, it's not a surprise that YES ignored this for that very reason.

[Frayed Knot]

Agreed that it's far too early to give out any journalism awards.
But at least the fact that they acknowledge that there's an issue out there and had Gary - plus whoever his sidekick du jour was - discussing it in the booth during a game puts them several steps ahead of YES (Steroids ... What Steroids?) or MSG (apparently still unaware that Isaiah has been hit with a sexual harrassment suit) in the 'Not Being A House PR Firm' contest.

[Guest abogdan]

Don't forget about Bobby Estellela! Erase his records!

[A Boy Named Seo]

LA Times talks to Ned Colletti, Kevin Towers, and some scouts on evaluating players in the post-roids era. Player cahnfidence (of lack of cahnfidence) is mentioned a couple of times as an indicator of a guy who may have been juicing and is now off. That and the dude's body shrinking.

I couldn't stop thinking about Bret Boone, his drastic drop off the face of the earth and his tearful farewell press conference, as I read this article.

[Frayed Knot]

FINALLY someone - Newsday's Jon Heyman in this case - is saying in print what I've been saying for years. Mainly in his first sentence:

Baseball continues to be held to a higher standard. Nobody cares why NFL players are so much bigger and faster, and how at least five Panthers were doing steroids without detection.
In 'Game of Shadows' 17 Olympic athletes, seven NFL players and only five MLB players are cited as steroid users. Yet baseball is taking the hit.



And don't get me wrong, MLB deserves all the hits they're getting and the NFL does deserve credit for pro-actively (thanks largely to a lap-dog PA) getting a testing program installed a while back - although they certainly haven't eradicated the problem despite claims to the contrary.
But I do think it's a fact that fans of the NFL act like as long as the bread & circuses continue that all's right with their world.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Baseball has that antitrust exemption, and, in exchange, they get publicly flogged before Congress a few times per generation.

[Frayed Knot]

Except that the anti-trust exemption doesn't explain the differences in the fan and (mainly) press reaction/ignoring.
Besides, the exemption has been so weakened over the years to the point where it's small potatoes as an actual issue.

[Guest Edgy DC]

It's strong enough for baseball to want to retain it. It's strong enough for baseball to tolerate public scoldings by semi-clueless congressmen. And it's storng enough for to keep the Kansas City Royals or somebody from moving into a more competitive region.

But your right in that football has certainly gotten exposés written about them, but It's OK, It's Only a Bruise instead of leading to Congressional hearings, becomes source material for a glamourous Olivar Stone movie.

I hold baseball to a higher standard. But I don't really like football. Maybe that's because baseball is held to a higher standard. Chicken, meet egg.

[Frayed Knot]

Franchise movement is the one area where baseball could still take advantage of their exemption - but the other major sports can control theirs as well without too much trouble. The NFL sat on the sidelines and tacitly allowed much of their '80s & '90s movement because, in part, they figured that enough movement would get politicians mad enough to grant them a blanket exemption (instead of getting individual waivers piecemeal) or, at minimum, get new and/or abandoned cities to commit more money to new stadia to keep or lure teams. They could have prevented much of the movement that stole teams from LA (twice), Oakland, Houston, St Louis & Baltimore within a 20 year period; they simply chose not to.

Although all of this is still besides the point. It's the press/fan reaction to steroid use or (in college basketball/football) fixing scandals where the stark diffrerences lie. Heyman's note is the first time I've even heard that football players were even mentioned in 'Game of Shadows', much less mentioned in greater numbers.