Just North of Wrigley Field

posted by James - 6:05 PM

When we should be acknowledging the loss of one of the greats, getting ready for the upcoming season, drafting our fantasy baseball teams and enjoying the great baseball the WBC is giving us right now, I'm not going to waste much time on my favorite subject of steroids in baseball and Barry Bonds. So, this will be it regardless of how many articles and books come out.

The Chicago Tribune has an article running right now saying MLB Commisssioner Bud Selig is thinking of suspending Bonds for the revelations SI detailed in their article about a soon-to-be-released book by two San Francisco Chronicle reporters. As if the myriad allegations against Bonds and the Grand Juries and Congressional hearings to this point shouldn't have been enough to get Selig to look into this a little closer, now he's going to bring the big Silver Hammer down on him.

Some are applauding him because a significant suspension or retirement coersion could protect the sanctity of Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron's home run records without the messiness of an asterisk.

But there's something bigger here than just numbers. My problem with Bonds and Palmeiro and Giambi has always been the deception. They've lied and lied and lied and it took a Grand Jury to come close to coming clean. MLB should suspend them not just for the use of something legal for most of their careers, but for damaging the integrity of the game by lying about it.

I applaud MLB for taking control of the supplements (some of?) their players are going to use, but they also need to provide a list of who's using the supplements to anybody who wants to read it. For example, if a guy adds 40 lbs of muscle and the list says he's not taking anything, that's something to look into.

As far as the records go, Palmeiro and Bonds are probably still in the Hall, because there's no proof who was and wasn't using during that time, including the pitchers they faced.

...but how far should we go with this protection of records? Should we start testing AROD right now? He's well on a pace to eclipse Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron.

To come close to satisfying me, they should test everybody. The players union should shut up about it, because they never got out in front of this issue. None of their players can look me in the face and tell me their clean without the clean urine sample to back it up. They should random test everybody, and have a baseline test for every player done the second they put on a major-league uniform.

If I want to watch a sport where I question the validity of the performance I'm seeing, I'll watch professional wrestling... and even they've announced plans to do just what I've said above.

I sincerely hope I have better things to write about on this blog this year... or think about writing about, but get around to doing it two weeks later, but by that time I don't really care so I'd rather spend two hours fiddling with my 30 fantasy baseball teams.