I’ve found it rather interesting that in the midst of Barry Bonds’ perjury trial and the news that Manny Ramirez abruptly retired instead of dealing with a 100-game suspension for another positive PED test (his second in three years), that some people have developed a rather nonchalant attitude towards steroids as it pertains to the game of baseball.

Whether it’s on Twitter, Facebook or in sports forums, people continue to utter the statement: “What’s the big deal? It’s only steroids. I like home runs! Steroids make the game more exciting!”

Honestly, I have rationalized at least part of this argument in the past. I couldn’t care less if someone wanted to take steroids – including athletes. Do you know what the yearly average is for deaths caused by steroids? Three. As in: three people. For comparison sake, tobacco kills 5.4 million people per year, which is a shade more than three.

That’s not to say I condone the use of steroids. When the day comes where I have children of my own, I’m going to make sure they understand how dangerous steroid use is. The potential side effects of misusing steroids are well known and if a doctor does not prescribe them, the risk just isn’t worth the reward in my eyes. We’re talking about highly dangerous stuff here, especially for those who don’t know what they’re doing.

But if a groan man wants to sink hundreds of dollars into drugs that will make him bigger, stronger or heal faster, then whatever. It doesn’t affect me and quite frankly, this country is dealing with way more pressing issues at the moment.

What does affect me, however, and what affects all baseball fans, are these athletes who decide to disrespect the game for personal gain. What people don’t get when it comes to players and steroids is the honor that comes with being elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame. That right should only be reserved for the best of the best. The elite. The greatest. The legendary. That list shouldn’t include people who used anything but their God-given ability to have great careers. People like Bonds, Ramirez, Mark McGwire and Roger Clemens should not be mentioned with the likes of Willie Mays, Babe Ruth, Mickey Mantle and Walter Johnson. Baseball stats are sacred. They should not be tarnished by the chemically enhanced.

So just leave steroids out of the game altogether. Continue to test players for PEDs and out those who test positive. Fans have the right to know who spat on the game in hopes of acquiring fame and fortune. Again, steroids might not be a “big deal” to some people because they think it makes the game more exciting. But to me, the game has always been just fine the way it is. It’s a beautiful sport and even though it’s not for everyone, it doesn’t need to be juiced up to be more entertaining.

Steroids do matter when it comes to our sport, baseball fans. You may like it when a bulked up action figure hits a home run for your favorite team, but it’s not like those home runs are thrown into a “steroids only” pile. When McGwire hit 70 in 1998, it counted. When Bonds hit 74 in 2001, it counted. You may have loved watching those home run chases, but those numbers counted in the record books.

And the record books deserve better. The Hall deserves better. The game deserves better. Baseball shouldn’t be just short-lived entertainment.

Barry Bonds says he’s proud of friend Mark McGwire for admitting to his PED use back in January of this year.

From ESPN.com:

“I have a really good friendship with Mark McGwire. I’m proud of him,” the 45-year-old Bonds, back in the Bay Area for a reunion at AT&T Park of the Giants’ 2000 NL West champion team, said when asked what he thought of McGwire’s January admission. “We’ve had a great relationship throughout our entire lives and throughout our career. I’m proud of what he did. I’m happy for him.”

He appeared to be in great shape and said he is down to about 225 pounds from his playing weight of 238.

“I’ve just been working out a lot, that’s all. I work out all the time,” Bonds said. “It’s been in my genes my whole life. I just don’t work out as hard anymore. I don’t lift as heavy weights anymore to be bulky. I don’t know, I’ve got that Hollywood look.”

I’ve got that Hollywood look? Does anyone else need to vomit or am I the only one?

People love to talk about “Manny being Manny” when it comes to the antics of Manny Ramirez, but ManRam has nothing on Bonds. This is a man that will look the media dead in the face and tell them that he’s proud of Mark McGwire for admitting his PED use, as if he shouldn’t have done the same thing long ago. Barry is one of those people that has subscribed to his own lies for so long that he actually believes in them now. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.

Photo from fOTOGLIF
]]> http://www.scoresreport.com/2010/04/12/bonds-says-he%e2%80%99s-proud-of-mcgwire/feed/ 0 http://www.scoresreport.com/2010/01/23/dealer-claims-mcgwire-used-to-get-bigger/ http://www.scoresreport.com/2010/01/23/dealer-claims-mcgwire-used-to-get-bigger/#comments Sat, 23 Jan 2010 18:00:32 +0000 Anthony Stalter http://www.scoresreport.com/?p=33441

Curtis Wenzlaff, a former trainer convicted of dealing steroids and who says he supplied Mark McGwire with performance-enhancing drugs in the late 80s, told ESPN’s “Outside the Lines” that Big Mac’s goal was to get “bigger, faster, stronger” from taking roids.

Wenzlaff also delivered the quote of the week when speaking on the subject:

“Will it help you hit a baseball?” Wenzlaff said. “Let me put it to you this way. If Paris Hilton was to take that array, she could run over Dick Butkus.”

When asked for his reaction to McGwire’s claim that he only took steroids to stay healthy enough to play, Wenzlaff said: “I chuckled. If excelling and kicking ass on the field is the end result I guess that’s a healthy, good feeling. But for health, there are other things you can take for health that are anabolic, but it wouldn’t be that type of combination.”

When asked about McGwire’s goal for taking the array of steroids he recommended and provided to McGwire, Wenzlaff said, “As anybody — bigger, faster, stronger.”

Shocking.

See, this is my problem with McGwire. He came “clean,” yet he still lied while doing so. He must honestly think that the general public is incredibly stupid and naïve. I would have had more respect for him if he came out and said:

“I’m ashamed – I took steroids and I want to come clean.”

“Why did you take steroids, Mr. McGwire?”

“Because they gave me big muscles and I wanted to hit as many home runs before my career was finished.”

He’d still be a cheater, but at least people could have respected him more for telling the truth. Now he just looks like a cheater and an idiot for thinking that he could get away with telling everyone he used drugs for health reasons. I’m not suggesting that everyone should buy into what Wenzlaff is saying, but it’s a joke to think that McGwire didn’t use riods to bulk up and smash 550-foot moonshots out of Busch Stadium.

Photo from fOTOGLIF
]]> http://www.scoresreport.com/2010/01/23/dealer-claims-mcgwire-used-to-get-bigger/feed/ 1 http://www.scoresreport.com/2009/08/21/baseball-superstar-accused-of-performance-enhancing-genie-use/ http://www.scoresreport.com/2009/08/21/baseball-superstar-accused-of-performance-enhancing-genie-use/#comments Fri, 21 Aug 2009 10:00:08 +0000 John Paulsen http://www.scoresreport.com/?p=22916 Reason #478 why I love The Onion.

Baseball Superstar Accused of Performance-Enhancing Genie Use

Steve Buckley of The Boston Herald thinks that fans will just have to deal with the fact that some of these players may not have known what substances they were actually taking in the past. Since the players might have been in the dark, the fans will never get answers.

In what continues to be a complicated issue in which facts and innuendo collide, creating an awkward, interpretative truth, it comes down to this: Anybody with an interest in baseball, from fans and media to industry employees and the players themselves, is forced, in the end, to make a judgment call about all this.

It’s a little like viewing an abstract painting: What you see, what you feel, may be far different from what the person standing next to you is seeing, feeling.

And so it is with David Ortiz.

But perhaps some Yankees – and some of Big Papi’s teammates – viewed the entire scene from afar, wondering if their name will be the next released.

It’s the world in which the players now live.

It’s the world in which anyone who follows baseball now lives.

I hate all this pussyfooting. If a player took a supplement that “may or may not have contained steroids,” I view the issue in the same light as just doing the real drugs. It’s like finding a paper bag full of money hidden in a bush. You know that money is there under shaky circumstances, but you might take it anyway and walk away with an unexpected payday. Still, it’s not kosher. These players knew they were getting into some risky business when they walked into these “stores” or “doctor’s offices” and are willing to feign ignorance.

Find a picture of David Ortiz from the height of his career. Now look at Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, and Alex Rodriguez from theirs. Now go find a photo of Hank Aaron from any point of his career. Case closed.

If guys like David Ortiz really cared about “keeping it clean,” they would have made sure the substance didn’t contain a steroid. Whatever he was taking, it allowed him to put up bloated numbers that he’ll never again be able to replicate. To me, that’s evidence enough. I hope I’m proven wrong. Then again, like most real baseball fans, I take the last 15 years of the game with a grain of salt.

Hank Aaron never hit over 50 home runs in a season. However, he did hit 755 in his career, but none of them went over 500 ft. into impossible territory. I don’t think too much about the suspicion surrounding Ortiz because I already know the answer. None of those guys were for real.

David Ortiz addressed the media about his positive PED test from 2003 on Saturday and stated that he never buys or uses steroids.

From ESPN.com:

“I definitely was a little bit careless back in those days when I was buying supplements and vitamins over the counter — legal supplements, legal vitamins over the counter — but I never buy steroids or use steroids,” Ortiz said during a news conference that began about 3½ hours before his Boston Red Sox played the New York Yankees.

“I never thought that buying supplements and vitamins, it was going to hurt anybody’s feelings.”

If you replace “vitamins and supplements” with “flax seed oil,” then Ortiz essentially did the same thing Bonds did in that he attributed the positive test results to over-the-counter supplements and not anabolic steroids.

This may sound like I’m defending Big Papi, but maybe he really did take an over-the-counter supplement or something like Androstenedione, which is banned now, but wasn’t in 2003. Some people like to group supplements like testosterone boosters in with anabolic steroids and there is a massive difference between the two in terms of the effect they can have on your body. We don’t know what Ortiz took, so it’s not really fair to speculate until more details come out (if they ever do, that is).

It’s not surprising that Ortiz didn’t reveal much in the press conference. Don’t forget that these test results were supposed to be confidential and therefore Ortiz was probably legally bound from providing too much detail.

That said, it would have been nice if he admitted what he took, especially if he’s telling the truth about never taking steroids. He could have gotten on the podium and said, “I took Supplement X, Y and Z” and at least gained a little respect from his detractors. But since he didn’t reveal anything, many fans will go onto believe that he disgraced the game by cheating.

The sad part is that we may never know what these guys took.

According to an article by the Boston Globe, Red Sox DH David Ortiz (along with MLB Players Association director Michael Weiner) is expected to address the media over the weekend about testing positive for PEDs in 2003.

“We’re going to, like I said, we’re trying to figure things out and move on,’’ Ortiz said. “I’m not going to keep this in my head my whole career. It’s not like I have 10 years left. It’s the kind of situation that you get frustration.

“I’m gonna let you guys know what I’ve got. Period.’’

If Ortiz thinks he can’t tarnish his image more than he already has, he’s wrong. When he eventually talks to the media, he should be honest and forthright about what he took or at the very least, admit that he did take a banned substance and that he was wrong. If he denies anything or tries to act like he was unaware of what he was taking, then the public is going to crucify him.

Fans aren’t going to forget that he tested positive for PEDs, but they would probably be more willing to forgive him if he admitted that he did take something and threw himself at the mercy of the public. He should take a page out of Andy Pettitte and Jason Giami’s book and just be honest about the entire situation because after all, he’s already been caught.