Tag: Bud Selig steroids

Are we easing up on Bonds?

August 4, 2009 /

Art Spander of RealClearSports currently has a piece up concerning Barry Bonds’ status amidst reports of David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez using steroids. Spander feels the public is beginning to evenly spread their disgust towards all steroid users in baseball instead of just focusing on Bonds.

Bonds now is insignificant. We went after him and his silent partner, Greg Anderson, the trainer, so long ago it’s almost ancient history. Mark Fainaru-Wada and his then San Francisco Chronicle colleague Lance Williams left no syringe unturned. We acted like the sky was falling then shrugged.

What’s falling now are other names into place, the latest of those Ortiz and Manny, who in 2004 combined to help the Red Sox win their first World Series in 86 years. And just an aside, you think any of those self-righteous Boston fans would give back the title because like the Bonds homers they yelped about it might be tainted?

Barry Bonds has a different problem. He’s being hounded by the government on charges of perjury, the U.S. claiming he lied under oath when in December 2003 Barry said he never used the stuff.
But the guess is Barry never will come to trial. And who cares anymore He took his grief.

He was the Lone Ranger, the one who stood alone until it seems there was no room left on the list for all players who were guilty. The line forms to the right.

For the most part, I agree with Spander. Still, I think the only reason people seem to hate Bonds less is because he’s been forced to retreat from the public eye. You never hear about his whereabouts other than when he shows up at a Giants game. And rightfully so. Spander points out that Bonds received the brunt of the blame while Sosa and McGwire received much less. Look, I don’t like any of those three guys, but the main reason Bonds was cast as the scapegoat was because he actively pursued two of baseball’s most prized records. Since Barry Bonds was so jealous, as Spander claims, he used the remainder of his career to surpass Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record. While Sosa and McGwire retired, Bonds stayed in the game for the sole reason of earning the recognition he felt he deserved. That is his greatest sin. He knew the Giants weren’t going to win a championship, but he cheated his way into the record books while he still could.

Then there’s the issue of lying. The public tends to forgive those who admit to their transgressions far quicker than those who endlessly skirt around the issue. Look where it’s gotten Bonds. He holds one of baseball’s most popular records and he’s one of the most unpopular athletes in the world. Congratulations. Outside of the Bay Area, he’s viewed as a free criminal.

But what of Alex Rodriguez, Manny Ramirez, and David Ortiz? Well, I think A-Rod and Manny have far better chances than Bonds (Ortiz has debatable numbers) of getting into the Hall of Fame. Rodriguez at least admitted to using. Manny has silently accepted the blame. Ortiz is beginning to use the Bonds tactic of denial.

In the end, it’s all about ego. If Bonds loved the game and not the records, he could have quit before surpassing Aaron, a player who never used steroids. However, he didn’t. Bonds went ahead and broke Mark McGwire’s single season home run record, a record that was already a joke. So what? Smart baseball fans know it’s impossible to hit 73 home runs in a season without cheating in some way. At the end of the day, we know the real record rightfully belongs to Roger Maris.

Fact is, Bonds did deserve all flack he received at the time. And it wasn’t worth it in the long run as he’ll never be appreciated by the people who watched him play. As for the Red Sox win with steroid users, yes, it’s tarnished. Still, there’s evidence that suggests many of the recent World Series champions has steroid users on their teams. It’s sad, and I think a true Red Sox fan would rather give up their last championships than have to sit through the steroid era. I hope.

Nevertheless, baseball is looking cleaner by the day. Last year’s World Series featured only one player (Ryan Howard) who had hit over 40 home runs during the regular season. Doesn’t the complexion of the 2008 Philadelphia Phillies look much different than that of the 2004 Boston Red Sox? Man, what if the Rays had won?

MLB

Selig upset with steroid leaks

June 17, 2009 /

According to Phil Rogers of the Chicago Tribune, baseball commissioner Bud Selig is upset that names from the 2003 list of players who tested positive for banned substances are being leaked to the media.

Apparently Selig and others around Major League Baseball believe that a lawyer with the U.S. Attorney’s office (either past or present) ignored a court seal in order to give Sammy Sosa’s name to Michael S. Schmidt of the New York Daily News, who reported yesterday that the slugger was on the ’03 list.

I don’t blame Selig for being peeved that someone is leaking names that were supposed to be kept anonymous. After all, the only reason the player’s union agreed to the ’03 drug testing was because the players who tested positive wouldn’t be punished and because their names would never be released.

That said – give…me…a…break. If Selig wants to be upset with anything, how about he get upset with himself, the owners and the player’s union that allowed us to get to this point. He turned a blind eye to the steroid issue and now he wants to play victim. I guess he has to put on this little front about being mad about the leaks in efforts to settle down the player’s union, but he has nobody to blame but himself for this mess.

What Selig should do is go back on his word to the player’s union and release the rest of the 104 names on that 2003 list before the media does. A-Rod and Sosa’s names have already been released – how much longer until more names are announced? If Selig thinks that the media is going to stop digging, he has another thing coming. He may anger the players and the union by releasing the names, but it’s well past time for people to start taking responsibility for what has happened to the game of baseball.

MLB

Justice: Tejada only regrets getting caught

March 27, 2009 /

Miguel Tejada was sentenced to one year of probation for misleading Congress about the use of performance-enhancing drugs. Richard Justice of the Houston Chronicle writes that Tejada only regrets getting caught.

Nice going, Miggy. Way to represent The Good Guys.

Incidentally, who decided a $5,000 fine was any way to punish a guy making $13 million? Couldn’t the feds have ordered Tejada to pay whatever the government spent proving he’s a liar?

Anyway, about eight seconds after Tejada’s plea-bargain agreement was announced, the Astros issued a statement saying how happy they were to have this whole thing behind them.

In other words, let’s all forget that this guy is a cheat and that we got fleeced on this trade.
As for Tejada, he hasn’t exactly been forthright. He has confessed to what he got caught doing and nothing more. And there appears to be more there.

He played the contrite card when he showed up at spring training until someone asked about his use of steroids and HGH.

He bristled and said he wasn’t going to talk about it. Now that’s coming clean.

He doesn’t have to admit anything. The Mitchell Report does it for him. It’s right there on page 201 along with photo copies of checks to ex-teammate Adam Piatt for $3,100 and $3,200.
Piatt said he provided Tejada with steroids and human growth hormone, but he has no way of knowing if Tejada actually used the stuff.

Unfortunately Justice is right and even more unfortunate is that this is the way it’s going to be when it comes to the steroid era in baseball. The players that used will deny or only own up to what they were caught with. The owners will continue to look the other way and hide under the umbrella that is Bud Selig. And Selig will continue to act like the victim in all of this.

The players, owners and Selig will continue to ask to move on. And eventually, the fans will probably oblige because we’re not going to stop going to the parks.

MLB

Can baseball be fixed?

February 13, 2009 /

Of course it can. We have hard evidence that the game has been fixed since the early ‘90s. Crooked players, crooked trainers, crooked owners, crooked general managers, and crooked lawyers have all contributed to turning America’s pastime into a racketeering enterprise. For the last 15 years, baseball fans have watched their game turn into a traveling sideshow. Before our very eyes, we’ve conceded that baseball will have that sort of WWE fantasy – the realization that while what we are watching at times is athletically amazing, it’s not altogether real.

This week, a video surfaced of WWE wrestler Chris Jericho punching a female fan who was antagonizing him. All this recent hullabaloo got me thinking about the relationship fans have with their favorite athletes. As witnessed in the video, while many attempted to get a picture with Jericho, a few passionately wanted to abuse him. They stupidly believed in a fabricated storyline and sought to attack the main instigator who was ruining their day. Essentially, they cared way too much about something that wasn’t even real.

Wrestlers are actors who work out, plain and simple. While they do display some degree of athleticism, that’s not why fans pile into the arena. They watch because of the engaging storylines written by failed Hollywood writers. Hey, this amalgam of fiction and sports did it for me as kid. However, other hobbies and becoming familiar with the female gender prevented my relationships with The Rock, “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, and The Undertaker from continuing. Nevertheless, I always hung on to baseball, even to this day. Unfortunately, I’ve watched my sport evolve into a form of sports entertainment, not unlike the WWE.

Baseball was the first sport I ever really loved. I played it. I collected the cards. I went to the Dodgers games. I stayed up late to watch Dan Patrick and Chris Berman on “Baseball Tonight.” I really loved it. Even then, I appreciated that I didn’t know anything personal about the players I admired. In my mind, they were all “good guys.” Now that I think about, the reason I was in awe of these athletes was because I was watching them perform things I couldn’t do. I couldn’t hit as far (Frank Thomas), I couldn’t throw as hard (Randy Johnson), and I sure as hell could never make that catch (Ken Griffey). At ten years old, something inside me couldn’t stand that they were better players than I was. What they were doing was real, and there was no way around it.

macThen it happened. Barry Bonds was accused of taking steroids and the game imploded. I could do what some of these guys were doing – I just needed to cheat. Then there were the Supreme Court hearings and the Mitchell Report. And Jose Canseco? What? Amidst all the two-stepping by those involved, Canseco has appeared to be the only constant source of truth. In doing so, he’s been blackballed from the game and created more enemies than he has home runs. I don’t care what you think about the guy, all of his claims have proven to be true. As I write this, a list of 103 players who took steroids in 2003 is out. Donald Fehr, the union chief of the MLBPA says that it’s unlikely that he will ever release this list. Call me crazy, but I respect Canseco for outing himself and others who contributed to tarnishing the game. Fehr, on the other hand, is protecting these criminals by not releasing their names. And they are criminals. If you used illegal methods at your job to generate a salary three to five times your actual worth, you would not be suspended three months without pay. You would immediately be fired and most likely be taken to court, tried as a criminal.

Suddenly, everybody in baseball is a bad guy. The game looks a lot more like Barry Bonds than Chase Utley, a lot more like Ty Cobb than Willie Mays. The good guy is gone. Hey may be there, but you’ll rarely hear about him because he isn’t putting up the bloated numbers, negotiating $25 million one-year contracts, or lying in front of a grand jury. Nope, you only hear about the bad guys. Sadly, what these individuals are doing is fake, so unreal in their performance and in the money they earn from it. They’re the wrestlers of baseball and they’ve been winning every match. Bud Selig is Vince McMahon, the one in charge whose negligence indirectly promotes the evil. And we’re just the fans who get punched in the face for caring too much about something that isn’t even real.

But it once was. Most of our readers most likely got into the sport before the early 90s, when players weren’t injecting themselves left and right. We got into the game simply because of its blueprint. We love the stats, the diving grab, the long ball, the uniforms, the stadiums, the broadcasters, and the rivalries. Most importantly, we love the 162-game season, because its constant loyalty never wavers like a girlfriend who’s still in community college and much too attractive for us. The game will be there in April, but also in October, unlike so many things in life.

Baseball can be fixed, my friends, and in a good way. While casual fans quit watching out of disgust and sponsors pull their support because of the negative association, the purists will remain because of this blueprint. Selig and the player’s union will have to rely on this stable base and build up from that. Here are my suggestions:

1. Officially ban any currently retired players associated with steroid use from the Hall of Fame. With what we know, this would include Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro, and Roger Clemens. Whether or not their stats before using are strong enough to encourage admission is not valid. They cheated, and if Pete Rose and “Shoeless” Jack Jackson are exempt, so are these guys.

2. As with all sports, statistics tell its history. Baseball purists are some of the most eccentric and passionate stat-heads around. To please them, any World Series championship team that contained a steroid-user shall receive an asterisk.

3. Bud Selig should force Player’s Union chief Donald Fehr to release the list of the remaining 103 players who tested positive for steroid use in 2003. Since Fehr is publicly holding evidence that incriminates certain individuals, I have no idea how the information hasn’t been made available.

4. The players on this list, and those mentioned in the Mitchell Report, are also banned from the Hall of Fame. All stats recorded during years of admitted or proven steroid use will contain an asterisk.

arod5. All active players that tested positive will be banned for the following season without pay. Their contracts would then start up again the season after. Therefore, if they were in the second year of a three-year contract, after their banned season, they would then commence being paid for the final year of their contract. Even though they’ll have been “laid off” for a year, I think they’ll be able to get by.

6. The popular notion revolving around this preceding idea is that their salaries should be donated to various charities. While that may be a good idea, I’m from the school of thought that selfishly believes baseball fans got incredibly screwed by all of this. With the money back in the owner’s hands, Selig shall order that they use it in a way that gives back to the fans. Three to five games during the seasons will be free to fans on a first-come, first-serve basis (season tickets holders keep theirs). There will be more “free days” such as Free Hot Dog Day, Free Nachos Day, etc. Lastly, ticket prices and concessions will be reduced by a figure both sides can agree on. What fans have been watching the past few years has been a hoax. With many of the big-earners suspended, owners will have less money to pay out. With ticket and concession prices slashed, the game should be fine economically. We’ve already seen that its TV ratings haven’t been affected.

It’s a long road ahead, I know. Let’s not forget that baseball has dealt with cheaters and liars in the past, just not at this disgusting level. While baseball purists will never forget, we will forgive because we want to. Unfortunately for Bud Selig, there aren’t enough baseball purists to pay his salary, let alone those of Manny Ramirez, CC Sabathia, and Mark Teixiera. The casual fans needs to tune in and they’re slowly beginning to stop. It’s not just time to come clean, it’s time for the league to take a well-deserved spanking from everybody who’s seen or been to a game in the last few years. We’ve earned it.

MLB

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