Bonds, the HR chase & the race issue

Don Imus is a jackass. That is why he is incapable of empathizing with others. You should be able to relate.

 

yes, i can see how my statement could be seen as extremely racially biased. meanwhile, mike greenberg insinuating that the black respondents probably knew very little about hank aaron's struggle speaks to his amazing, fair-minded grasp of america's racial dilemma. mike greenberg = martin luther king. thanks for setting the record straight.

 

Anyone else remember the ESPN the Magazine cover with a smiling Bonds on the front from, I think, about four or five years ago?

It asked the question "Is America ready to love Barry Bonds?"

At that point in time, it was. Here was the best player in the game, and someone who was being touted as the greatest hitter in history thanks to his HR totals, strike-zone patience, IBB records. America embraced him, and I think he came out of his shell as well. He had his daughter at press conference asking opponents to "pitch to my daddy." I, for one, laughed along at the cuteness, and I'm pretty sure I'm not the only one.

Then all of the BALCO stuff came out, and everything turned on him. From the trainer not talking, to writers saying he was hiding behind his kids when he brought them to press conferences as he had in the past, to the cheating and tax evasion scandal (whatever happened to that, BTW?) with the mistress in her rent-free house in Arizona (I think it was).

It's continued to unravel since then, and Bonds has gone back into his shell. But for a time, America was ready to love him.

 

bob nightengale put these issues on the table a year ago for usa today.

http://www.usatoday.com/sports/baseball/nl/giants/2006-03-29-bonds-cover_x.htm

also, let's don't forget that 55-year-old roger clemens is returning for his 35th major league season and american sports writers are so giddy that you'll hardly read a word about clemens' perfectly-sculpted body and enlarged head.

 

I think there are many American sports writers who believe Clemens is using something. Unlike Bonds and McGwire and Palmeiro, there isn't any proof of Clemens' use and/or abuse of performance enhancers.

 

Wasn't there a possible lead with the Grimsley investigation? No-one seemed to really follow through on that.

 

I love how all these sports media types are sooo up in arms about PED's in baseball when Bonds is on the verge of breaking the record but were happy to ride on the backs of Sosa and McGwire back in the day. Lupica wrote in his SFTL column yesterday, basically, that there are people now who are saying they knew what was happening back in the mid-1990's in MLB. Trust me, Mike: There were. It's just that some media members were more concerned with making a buck on a book about the HR chase than looking into guys showing up after an offseason weighing 30 lbs. heavier, all the new weight being muscle.

This issue isn't new, and it certainly isn't confined to baseball. Jim Haslett has talked about the late 70's Steelers, I believe, using steroids, etc. But Bonds is the one who is supposed to take the fall for all of this. Or he, Mac, Raffi and Canseco?

Give me a break.

 

Well, if any of you had watched the new and vastly unimproved Cold Pizza today, you would have heard Screamin A shriek like a muppet on this topic.

I believe his stance is that black people either do not believe Bonds took steroids, or they believe it but it doesn't matter because everyone was so happy about Mark McGwire, because he's white, and because the white media didn't do its job to bust him.

Then his head blew off and they went to commercial.

 

Do you not get the internets out there?

From the NYT, Selena Roberts:

The threat to the Yankees has nothing to do with Clemens’s age, but how he hasn’t aged at all on the approach to 45 when he once seemed kaput at age 35. Maybe Clemens has developed a natural youth potion, an organic Botox for his old bones. Certainly, Clemens deserves credit for his greatness — with a talent that is an understandable siren’s song for the Yankees — but he has also witnessed his aura undermined by a steroid whisper campaign.

In the past two years, Clemens’s name has been linked to doping speculation amid a book tour by Jose Canseco and documents reported by The Los Angeles Times.

In his Harlequin about steroids, Canseco wrote about Clemens’s irritation with juiced hitters in the mid-90s, sluggers who were gaining on the Rocket’s fastball.

“One of the benefits of steroids is that they’re especially helpful in countering the effects of aging,” Canseco wrote in his book, “Juiced.” “So in Roger’s case, around the time he was leaving the Boston Red Sox — and Dan Duquette, the general manager there, was saying he was ‘past his prime’ — Roger decided to make some changes. He started working out harder. And whatever else he may have been doing to get stronger, he saw results.”

The innuendo did not cause Rocket to flip his booster. Instead, Clemens did what others branded a fraud by the fraudulent might do: He didn’t issue an emphatic denial, but a dismissive laugh as he launched into a comedy routine, poking fun at Canseco for spending his house arrest writing a book in ankle bracelets.

One tell-all down, another one to go. Last October, right after Clemens completed his short season with the Astros, finishing with a 2.30 earned run average and 102 strikeouts in 113 innings, an article surfaced in The Los Angeles Times.

A few months earlier, Jason Grimsley had been busted by authorities for ordering shipments of human growth hormone. Under an interrogation light bulb, Grimsley fingered several players for using performance-enhancing drugs, but the names were redacted in court records. The Times, saying it had seen the affidavit, revealed some of those names, which included Clemens and Pettitte.

The Times’s disclosure enraged the United States Attorney’s office, which labeled the report inaccurate but did not detail what mistakes had been made. What exactly was wrong in the report — the names, or something else?

Pettitte expressed surprise when his name was attached to Grimsley. And Clemens replied by saying he had passed every drug test given — all of them since sampling began in 2003 for a system that still does not include a blood test for human growth hormone.

The testing loopholes make it impossible to decide the purity of a player’s bloodstream. Such is the sticky residue of baseball’s toothless stance on steroids. Each year there is more police action, new steroid developments. The raid du jour now centers on a former Mets clubhouse attendant, Kirk Radomski, whose Long Island house was searched by investigators, who discovered a steroid supply closet for a client list of major leaguers.

The feds — along with baseball’s steroid sleuth, George J. Mitchell — are investigating Radomski’s info. Mitchell is currently calling players to dish on the league’s culprits.

Clemens may or may not be among the suspects. Are the Yankees concerned? Maybe the Boss has some inside information from his baseball spies. Maybe that is why he has just given Clemens everything a man could want. Either that, or the Yankees are desperate enough to take the risk.


Even Kepner's straight newser on the signing has this:

On the last weekend of the regular season, a report surfaced in The Los Angeles Times in which the former Yankee Jason Grimsley, in an affidavit, identified Clemens and Pettitte as players who had used performance-enhancing drugs. Soon after, the United States attorney Kevin V. Ryan said the report contained “significant inaccuracies” but did not elaborate.

 

Ah, the reign of witches will continue a while longer and nobody -- n-o-b-o-d-y -- will continue to give a damn.

 

Seems a pretty sure bet that after the whole Game of Shadows success, there isn't a reporter in the world who would LOVE to reel in the next big catch--especially the elusive Great White.