“‘Everyone involved in baseball over the past two decades — commissioners, club officials, the players’ association and players — shares to some extent the responsibility for the steroids era,’ Mitchell said in summation of his 20-month investigation. ‘There was a collective failure to recognize the problem as it emerged and to deal with it early on.‘” Former Senator (and go-to commission guy) George Mitchell’s report on Steroids in Baseball is released. And, while outing a number of star players as users (including Roger Clemens, Andy Pettite, Eric Gagne, David Justice, John Rocker, Gary Sheffield, and Mo Vaughn), Mitchell instead argues for change and collective responsibility rather than the initiation of a witchhunt. It does seem obvious, based on the list of names, that steroids were rife throughout the sport and can’t be limited to any one clubhouse (although there sure are a lot of Yankees named, aren’t there?) Well, here’s hoping they find a way to clean it all up. For my part, and as I’ve said several times now, major league baseball ranks somewhere down near hockey and golf in the list of sports I enjoy watching and following. Give me the NBA, or even the MLS, any day of the week (and the NFL twice on Sunday.)
Tag: Barry Bonds
756*.
It’s official: Notorious slugger and obvious juicer Barry Bonds passes Hammerin’ Hank Aaron as the all-time home run leader. Ho-hum. To be honest, I still haven’t figured out how I come down on the Bonds steroid thing (partly because I am at best only a casual fan of baseball, and thus don’t really care all that much. As I said here, I’d rather watch basketball, soccer, or football on any given night than I would MLB, even before the league gave us Dubya. Take that, George Will.) But, regarding Bonds: On one hand, he seems like a jerk, and it’s painfully obvious he’s a user. On the other, the Baseball Hall of Fame is filled with unlikable people, many people in pro baseball are clearly using, a case could be made against other kinds of enhancements (contacts, for example), and I highly doubt I could hit 756 home runs even if I were ingesting three times the steroids Bonds did. So, it’s a wash.
No joy in Mudville (but plenty of juice).
On the day after the untimely death of Kirby Puckett, Sports Illustrated publishes a devastating case against Barry Bonds, chronic steroid user. Not a huge surprise, of course, but sad nonetheless.
The Juice is Loose.
What?!? Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi used steroids?! Man, I’ve been thinking all this time that they both just subscribed to a rigorous neck-thickening regimen. (Next thing you’ll be telling me there’s no WMDs in Iraq.) Well, I guess odds were that at least a few members of the medicated 44% in America would play baseball.