RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Sports and Wrestling Bonds began using steroids, vast array of other drugs, in 1998

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Jim Jackson said:
I'm not missing the point that the evidence is overwhelming that Barry's a cheater, that his pursuit of Babe Ruth and ultimately Hank Aaron is a disgusting travesty. Hank Aaron deserves better than Barry Bonds.

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Animalman said:

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Jim Jackson said:
Technically no, since those three are not currently active.

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Rose wasn't active when he was investigated, and I think you're missing the point. Bonds is one of many suspects in this thing. After all the articles and comments and testimonies that painted steroid use as a giant, enormously widespread problem, you can't just focus on the guy at the top(or even a few guys at the top).

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Jim Jackson said:
I'm not saying that Selig shouldn't go after them all. I think he should. I think Congress will press him to do just that. But he can start with Barry. Barry's the highest profile guy who's still active and associated with steroid use.

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britneyspearsatemyshorts said:
Actually he was, he was being investigated for bets he made as a manager, while he was managing....

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Animalman said:


By "Active", I believe Jim means on an active roster(if he doesn't, then the "technically" part of his statement is a misnomer).

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Animalman said:

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Jim Jackson said:
I'm not saying that Selig shouldn't go after them all. I think he should. I think Congress will press him to do just that. But he can start with Barry. Barry's the highest profile guy who's still active and associated with steroid use.

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He's the highest profile guy in sports period, and that's undoubtedly why he's received the most attention. I just wonder if Selig has the balls to go after him.

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britneyspearsatemyshorts said:
Actually he was, he was being investigated for bets he made as a manager, while he was managing....

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By "Active", I believe Jim means on an active roster(if he doesn't, then the "technically" part of his statement is a misnomer).

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Barry Bonds has disgraced himself, his city, his team, his sport, and his country. In a better world, he would have retired already . . . but, of course, in a better world, he wouldn't be using steroids in the first place.

CHRIS OAKLEY
Woburn

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Joe Mama said:
I think I'll stop reading the Boston Globe...

http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/articles/2006/03/19/readers_sound_off_on_barry_bonds/

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Barry Bonds has disgraced himself, his city, his team, his sport, and his country. In a better world, he would have retired already . . . but, of course, in a better world, he wouldn't be using steroids in the first place.

CHRIS OAKLEY
Woburn

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Let's be honest: The thought of Barry Bonds' taking a women's infertility drug is a wee bit disconcerting.

And the notion of his ingesting a steroid used to boost muscle mass in cattle? Flat-out gross.

Bonds is the poster child for the MLB Steroid era.
(Look, I'm not a biologist, but what happens if the guy gets pregnant? Does he lactate buttermilk?)

Still, in the wake of the latest steroid allegations surrounding the San Francisco Giants' slugger, one thing strikes me as particularly shocking.

I find myself agreeing with -- gack -- Bode Miller.

Back up a few months. Before Miller decided that fat, drunk and stupid was a perfectly good way to go through the Olympics, skiing's self-styled corporate bad boy declared that sports doping should be permitted, and that banning performance-enhancing drugs does little to level the playing field or protect the health of athletes.

"I don't think it's a really big deal," Miller said of steroid use. "I think people should be able to do what they want to do."

Was Miller being sincere? Or were his words simply another salvo in his ill-fated, Nike-backed, I'm-such-an-iconoclast marketing campaign?

Hard to say. The messenger seems like a dope. But the message? The more I think about it, the more I'm convinced it has merit.

Really, why not let athletes juice?

Look, I'm not claiming that creating leagues of extraordinary gentleman whose shrunken testicles also happen to glow in the dark is a great idea. Nor am I insinuating that the reasons for barring steroids in sports are baseless.

(I'll leave both of those to Jose Canseco's next book. Dear Congress: please don't subpoena me during your next round of grandstanding. KTHNXBYE!)

No, all I'm saying is that for every argument against drug use, there's an equally reasonable argument for allowing it -- and that when it comes to steroid prohibition, the cure might be worse than the disease.

Why should Bonds and Co. be permitted to poke, prod and otherwise juice their bodies in the manner of experimental livestock? Consider the following:

Testing Flunks Out
The lab coats try. They really do. The NFL spends $10 million annually on its drug program, the toughest in pro sports. The International Olympic Committee reportedly administered 1,200 doping tests at the Torino Games, a 72 percent increase over Salt Lake City.

While working for Merrill Lynch, American shot putter Adam Nelson once had to cut short a client meeting when urine collectors demanded he provide a random sample. Right then and there.

So what do sports organizations get for their vigilance, for forcing dignity-stripped athletes to stop, drop and aim for the plastic cup?

A few years ago, I put those questions to Dr. Charles Yesalis, a Penn State University epidemiologist and one of the world's leading experts on drugs in sports.

His response was less than inspiring.

Testing only catches the stupid and the careless. The low-hanging fruit.

"When the Mark McGwire [androstenedione] scandal broke, I said one thing you could do is have all these sports federations pool $100 million each and give it to chemists around the world, give them five years and see what research does to close loopholes," Yesalis said. "Frankly, I wouldn't bet my house on that. With every loophole that closes up, one opens."

When it comes to juicing, the cat-and-mouse game between testers and cheaters is more like Tom and Jerry. The rodent usually wins. Screening for testosterone isn't foolproof. A reliable test for Human Growth Hormone -- one of the performance-enhancers Bonds allegedly used -- has yet to be developed. And clever chemistry can disguise doping.

Take THG, the steroid at the heart of the BALCO scandal (and also allegedly used by Bonds). Sprinter Kelli White reportedly passed tests while using the drug. Why? It was designed to be undetectable.

In fact, testers only got wise when disgruntled track coach Trevor Graham slipped them a sample of THG -- in a used syringe, reportedly -- and told them to look for it.

Examine some of the biggest doping busts of the last decade, and a similar pattern emerges. State and federal investigators nabbed a South Carolina doctor who filled illegal steroid prescriptions for three members of the Carolina Panthers; in 1998, customs officials at the French- Belgian border uncovered the biggest drug scandal in Tour de France history.

Likewise, chemists didn't dig up the latest allegations about Bonds. Dogged cops and reporters did.

"What would work? Aggressive, undercover police sting operations," Yesalis said. "I'm talking handcuffs. Put it on 'Cops.' But are you willing to do that against Penn State, USC, the Baltimore Ravens, the L.A. Lakers, on a sustained basis?"

Drug testing as we know it isn't totally futile. It snares little fish like Matt Lawton and big, clumsy ones such as Rafael Palmeiro. That said, a system that regularly busts the smartest, most sophisticated cheaters likely would be akin to enforcing the speed limit by having police cars stationed at every intersection: costly, invasive and hardly worth the trouble.

As such, why bother?

Competitive Integrity Is Relative.
The major argument against steroid use goes something like this: Drugs destroy competitive integrity by giving users a leg up on nonusers, thereby creating a nonlevel playing field.

Of course, our playing fields are hardly level to begin with.

Purists howl about Bonds' alleged drug use. No one says a word about his padded arm protector, a plate-crowding advantage that other hitters don't enjoy. Babe Ruth smacked 714 home runs without having to face African-American pitchers. The New York Yankees can afford more talent than the Kansas City Royals. Team Germany has better bobsled gear than Team Jamaica.

Duke basketball players get to learn from hoops savant Mike Krzyzewski, a man with his own AmEx commercial. Until his resignation last week, Duquesne players were stuck with Danny Nee, who led the team to the worst season in school history.

Should Coach K be banned, just to make things more fair?

Some say steroids are a distasteful shortcut. Not so.

They actually allow athletes to work harder and more effectively, much like a good strength coach. Others claim performance-enhancers are unnatural, which in turn raises a question: What is natural, exactly?

Is it Tiger Woods, having a Lasik operation? Pitchers throwing harder after Tommy John surgery?

Players wearing tinted contact lenses?

The banned substance EPO boosts endurance by stimulating the production of oxygen-carrying red blood cells. So does altitude training, which is why American speedskaters reportedly prepare for international competition by sleeping in oxygen-deprived rooms. Does the latter have more integrity than the former?

Jacob Sullum, the author of "Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use" isn't so sure. Neither am I.

"Everybody ought to be able to use the same tools," Sullum said. "But I don't see what is different in principle between steroids and anything else artificial we do to change our abilities, be it working out, diet, the various medicines people take to recover from injuries."

To put things another way: Pam Anderson is an entertainer, same as Bonds. She has patently fake breasts, bouncy, silicone-filled bags that have given her an undeniable competitive advantage over her unenhanced wannabe starlet peers.

Oddly enough, no one is demanding an asterisk be placed next to her Playmate of the Year award.

The Risks are Unknown
With the possible exception of Canseco, nobody says performance-enhancing drugs are good for your health.

But that doesn't mean they're going to kill you, either.

First and foremost, steroids aren't evil. They're medical drugs, used to treat ailments such as a body wasting away from AIDS. And like most drugs, they have side effects.

In the short term, 'roids can cause acne. They've been linked to mood swings, heart disease and liver damage. They also can shrink the testicles. Yikes.

Beyond that, Yesalis told me, medical scientists simply don't understand the long-term effects of juicing. Lyle Alzado didn't die of 'roid rage. He died of brain lymphoma, a rare form of cancer. Can steroids be used safely? Or with an acceptable level of danger?

Maybe not. But no one knows for sure. Meanwhile, one thing seems clear: ban drugs, and athletes will continue to use them; allow drugs, and those same athletes will at least be able to juice under some sort of medical supervision.

Ask yourself: better to follow a 'roid regime designed by the shady likes of Greg Anderson? Or one put together by the Mayo Clinic?

"If you could regulate and control steroid use, maybe that would be the answer to some of the problems,"said Dr. Robert Ruhling, director of the George Mason University human performance laboratory. "But you would need some sort of medical review panel, since there are such things as unethical doctors."

True enough. Malpractice would be a risk. So would health problems. But remember: Elite athletes are willing put themselves in harm's way all the time and are allowed to do so. Boxers get punched in the head. Football linemen beef up to steer-like proportions, never mind the strain on their hearts and joints. Downhill skiers risk broken bones and worse.

In everyday life, potentially addictive prescription painkillers are a big deal; in sports, they're de rigueur.

"I'm in my 60s, and I've had three concussions," said Ruhling, a former college tennis player. "Each time, I was told to not do anything for six to eight weeks. Well, sometimes those quarterbacks get thrown back in the next week."

The Kids Will Be Alright
Athletes are role models. If they use steroids, our children will follow suit. Or so we're told.

Doug Abrams has doubts. A youth hockey coach and expert panelist at the University of Rhode Island's Center for Sports Parenting, he says teens juice for the same reason adults do.

Because it works.

"They want the same performance-enhancing effect," said Abrams, a law professor at the University of Missouri. "A chance to get a college athletic scholarship."

Looking to point fingers? Forget the likes of Brian Bosworth and Palmeiro. Think overzealous parents, increasingly professional youth leagues, a culture that prizes athletic achievement above just about everything else.

Besides, even if a kid takes steroids because he idolizes Bonds, that doesn't mean Bonds should have to refrain. The man can smoke. He can patronize a strip club. He can vote, pay taxes, see an R-rated movie.

"There are things that are appropriate for adults that aren't appropriate for children," Sullum said. "I guess athletes shouldn't be driving cars, either."

Go back to Anderson, her Maxim cover-girl peers, Hollywood starlets in general. Bodies by liposuction. Bee-stung lips pumped with Botox. Magazine cover portraits, Photoshopped to the nth degree.

Who has done more psychological damage to the youth of America? A few buffed-up sluggers? Or scores of waifish supermodels, driving teenage girls to anorexia and their mothers to the nearest plastic surgeon?

Maybe President Bush can scold the cast of "Desperate Housewives" during his next State of the Union Address. Perhaps Congress should subpoena Kate Moss.

"I don't understand why athletes get this burden of being role models that no other public figures have," Sullum said. "Why more of a role model than an actor or a scientist? Everybody ought to be moral, but being an athlete doesn't impose a special burden."

We're All Hypocrites
We pop recreational Viagra. We study for exams by popping Ritalin. We shed extra pounds with gastric bypass surgery, a grisly medical procedure rife with ghastly side effects (gallstones, anemia, pulmonary embolism). We enhance ourselves on a daily basis -- for performance, for fun, for petty vanity. Because, quite frankly, we can.

"It's the American way," Ruhling said. "If I want to be in shape today, I should have been in shape yesterday. If one is good, 10 will be a lot better."

Do as we say, sports world. Not as we already do.

(Unless you're talking cow hormones. That's still pretty gross).

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Animalman said:
I guess Rob doesn't love me afterall...

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Rob Kamphausen said:
if you think your opinion of a hypothetical, impossible-to-recreate scenario, involving a never-existing person with potentially questionable stats has more validity than my opinion of a hypothetical, impossible-to-recreate scenario, involving a never-existing person with potentially questionable stats

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Rob Kamphausen said:
yes. this is why i didn't want to get into it.

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Rob Kamphausen said:
i've been hurt before

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sorry. I told you to use more lube.

White people don't care about Babe Ruth.

Really, we don't. I swear.

Obviously there is a heck of a lot of white people out there, so speaking for all of them is, by definition, impossible. But I feel compelled to try because every time a discussion involving Barry Bonds turns to color, I keep hearing about Babe Ruth, his whiteness and how, apparently, White America is threatened by Bonds' imminent passing of Ruth on the career home run list.

I've heard it from Bonds, from social scholars, from radio hosts, from columnists I respect. The latest came in USA Today where LSU professor Leonard Moore claimed:

"White America doesn't want (Bonds) to (pass) Babe Ruth and is doing everything they can to stop him. America hasn't had a white hope since the retirement of Larry Bird, and once Bonds passes Ruth, there's nothing that will make (Ruth) unique, and they're scared."

In any discussion of race, it is always good to listen to the different arguments because, even if you don't agree, there is usually something to learn or some new point to consider. Too often, the stuff whites can't remember are the things blacks can't forget.

So while I wholeheartedly reject the notion that racial enlightenment is defined by membership in the Bonds fan club – reasonable people can disagree on the issue and it's not like whites, at least whites who aren't St. Louis Cardinals fans/lemmings, support Mark McGwire – I am not dismissing everything being said.

The fact is, some whites do hate Bonds because he is black. That's the reality of America, which has improved in terms of race relations but sure hasn't improved enough. Anytime I write about Bonds, a handful of the anonymous (and occasionally signed) emails that follow contain ugly, hateful, racist stuff. I have no doubt Bonds receives that kind of feedback 50-fold.

So this isn't to be flippant or dismissive of a serious issue. I am not going to defend all white people here. But I am going to defend almost all white people concerning our supposed Ruth obsession, which has been repeated so many times it has almost become fact. But it isn't fact. I just don't see it, hear it, know it or acknowledge it.

White people – at least a vast percentage of white people under the age of, say, 70 – do not care one single bit about Babe Ruth. Or at least, no more than any other player. Certainly, we don't care that he was white. And even more certainly, we take no racial pride in him. None.

(It is worth noting that Spike Lee, among others, has contended, and once researched without conclusion, that Ruth was at least partially African-American. If so, then this gets even more ridiculous. But for this column we'll stick to the theory that Ruth was white.)

Back in the early 1970s, when Henry Aaron was on the verge of breaking Ruth's home run record, the Bambino's skin pigmentation surely fueled some of the racist reaction. But that was then. This is 2006.

The aura of Ruth is diminished, if not extinct. I am in my 30s and in my entire life I never ever heard a white person talk about how racially important or meaningful Babe Ruth was. He is best known for that contrived Boston Red Sox curse, not as some great white hero of yesterday.

I've heard the rare comment of racial pride about Larry Bird, Eminem – heck, even Rocky Balboa – but never Ruth. To people of my generation, he is just another dead old ball player. He retired in 1935, after all, before either of my parents were born.

In an admittedly unscientific way, I spent the last month asking whites about this, trying to be proven wrong. I batted it around with colleagues. I opened up the topic on talk radio. I sent emails to friends.

Not only did I fail to find one white person who cared one bit about Ruth's race, but I also failed to find one who knew of any white people who did. Most just laughed at the question, realizing the absurdity of it all.

Maybe someone will write in and inform me there is this undercurrent of Ruth-inspired racial pride out there, people wringing their hands about the downfall of our race because the Babe only clubbed 714, or that there is actually a grand plan to stop Bonds for the sake of God, country and vanilla ice cream. But I doubt it.

The people who used to hold Ruth up as a symbol of White America, an icon to hold onto as the black athlete began to dominate, are mostly dead. Besides, contrary to Professor Moore's contention, Bonds passing Ruth would do nothing to affect the Babe's legacy.

What's the difference between No. 2 and No. 3? Is Willie Mays any less of a player because Bonds is ahead of him? How about Frank Robinson? Ted Williams? Roberto Clemente? Mickey Mantle? Aaron won't lose his place as a true American sports hero if Bonds passes him.

Not that Bonds beating Aaron wouldn't be unfortunate. It would be just as unfortunate as the pathetic McGwire, pumped up on Lord knows what, breaking the dutiful Roger Maris' single-season home run record in 1998. The memory of McGwire preening about and pretending he and Maris were equals all while Maris' poor family watched can turn your stomach.

And that's the real problem, at least for the overwhelming majority of fans. The lying. The cheating. The false pride. The fake glory. The fact that all the great power numbers we grew up memorizing have been lost forever by these selfish, silly clowns and a commissioner who enabled them.

So sure, there are some sickos out there who hate Bonds because he is black. But I doubt there is anyone who hates Bonds because Babe Ruth was white.

No matter what they keep saying.

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Jim Jackson said:
The greatest injustices in all this are that Roger Maris isn't in the Hall of Fame and that he had to endure that asterisk.

If memory serves, he was a two-time MVP and every other retired player who won two MVPs is in the Hall of Fame (e.g., Morgan and Bench).

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Harmon Killebrew knows records are made to be broken. That's OK with the former AL MVP who hit 573 home runs -- as long as those records aren't tainted.

With Barry Bonds close to catching Babe Ruth for second place on the career home run list behind Hank Aaron, while also facing lingering questions about steroids, Killebrew isn't sure what to think.

"If they're doing something that is an illegal situation, that's different," Killebrew said Friday. "That's why I say there's a cloud over baseball right now. You hate to point any fingers at anybody because you don't really know for sure."

A federal grand jury in San Francisco is investigating whether Bonds lied under oath when he said he never knowingly used performance-enhancing drugs.

"You look at some of his pictures in 1998, and you look at him now, it doesn't look like the same ballplayer," Hall of Fame reliever Rollie Fingers said. "The court is still out on whether he did it or whether he didn't do it, but I'm sure we'll find out in the end what the real story is."

But that's not likely to happen before Bonds catches Ruth at 714 homers, a mark the 41-year-old San Francisco Giants slugger was two shy of going into Friday night's game at Philadelphia. Aaron hit 755 homers.

"It was going to be broken sooner or later. The guys are just too big and too strong today," former Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver said of Ruth's mark. "Dave Winfield and Frank Howard, they were monsters in baseball at their time. Now look at guys, they're all big and strong."

Killebrew, eighth on the career homer list, Fingers and Weaver were among a group of Hall of Famers at a golf fund-raiser to benefit the hall's educational programs. They got a chance to play on the course where the PGA Tour will be next week for the Byron Nelson Championship.

And a chance to answer questions about Bonds.

"It's a lot easier not talking about it," longtime Pirates second baseman Bill Mazeroski said, though he acknowledged the uncertainty surrounding Bonds hurts baseball.

"I think Bonds is getting penalized for being a fantastic hitter, too," seven-time All-Star pitcher Robin Roberts said. "I never saw a better hitter than Bonds. He was an all-around ballplayer. Of course, he got older and he's not quite so athletic as he was. And you can see it's a struggle for him more now physically."

While not specifying Bonds or anyone else, Roberts said there obviously has been a change in the way players take care of themselves, "something they got involved with."

Roberts recalled a visit with a former teammate who was a coach in Oakland after playing in an old-timers' game there. When a bulky player walked by them in the clubhouse, Roberts' former teammate said, "Oh, that's steroids. ... He knew what did it."

Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench, speaking Friday at an appearance in Omaha, Neb., said records he and others set could be tainted by future Cooperstown inductees dogged with questions over steroid use.

"My records, Hank Aaron's records, Mickey Mantle's records ... anybody's records you want to pick out -- there's a chance any of them could be tainted to some degree," said Bench, a two-time MVP, 13-time All-Star and 10-time Gold Glove winner who hit 389 homers.

Ruth held the home run record for more than a half-century before Aaron passed him in 1974. Still, major league baseball isn't planning any on-field celebration when Bonds hits No. 715 to pass Ruth for second place.

"Until Barry or anybody else gets close to Aaron, I think that's really going to be the big thing. ... Nobody remembers who finishes second," Al Kaline, who hit 399 career homers, said before teeing off Friday.

"Babe Ruth is still the greatest baseball player that ever lived in my book," Killebrew said. "I think they're a little concerned right now about celebrating that. It's an interesting situation. I'm glad it's not my call."