Barry Bonds quest for HR record

[Dan Gould]

Dan, buddy...you are the laughingstock on this BBS. One little incongruence and you go off like a cheap firecracker.

If I am the laughingstock, why does my position coincide with those of everyone else who has posted on this thread except for you?

If I am the laughingstock, why do I have a collection of PMs from people saying in one form or another, "don't let up on that idiot Goodspeak"?

Why is that in all the time this thread has existed, not a single person has come to your defense in any way, shape or form?

Why is it that my arguments are no different from others, and when you respond to these arguments, people tell you that you

A] are changing the subject

OR

B] make no logical sense

You are sad.

You are pathetic.

That makes you a JOKE, AKA, a LAUGHINGSTOCK.

[Dan Gould]

Tongue-in-cheek or not, The Onion nails it.

Destruction Of National Pastime Given Two-Minute Standing Ovation

August 9, 2007 | Onion Sports

SAN FRANCISCO—A sellout crowd rose to its feet and exploded into ecstatic cheers Tuesday night as Barry Bonds completed the downfall of America's most revered sport by hitting a thundering 435-foot shot into the left field bleachers for career home run No. 756 and tainting baseball's most beloved record.

Celebrations broke out throughout AT&T Park and thousands of flashbulbs went off as Bonds took his ceremonial trip around the bases, his arms raised in a jubilant gesture of triumph as he completed his desecration of baseball. Fireworks filled the night sky to mark the utter destruction of the national pastime, a scramble for the infamous baseball broke out in the stands, and the game was interrupted for 10 minutes in the bottom of the fifth to mark the shameful occasion.

Mike Bacsik, the pitcher who made the difficult and admirable decision to pitch to Bonds as if he were a normal player, and who will forever be known as the man whose fastball was sent out of the park along with the last remnant of baseball's self-respect, could only watch. Bonds would later present Bacsik with an autographed bat.

Moments after Bonds crossed home plate into the loving arms of his family and the eventual judgment of history, he addressed the fans, thanking them for their support on his long, hard road of perverting baseball.

"Thank you very much. I got to thank all of you, all the fans here in San Francisco. It's been fantastic," he said to his deluded and complicit home crowd as his godfather Willie Mays, a fading symbol of what baseball once was, stood at his side.

As soon as Bonds completed his self-congratulation, a self-conscious gasp could be heard as a videotaped message from Hank Aaron was played over the video screen, sending surprise and a fleeting moment of uncomfortable self-awareness through both the crowd and Bonds himself.

"Throughout the past century, the home run has held a special place in baseball and I have been privileged to hold this record for 33 of those years," said Aaron, whose legacy of persevering with profound personal dignity through racism and persecution to become the all-time home run leader will hopefully not be tarnished by public acknowledgment of Bonds.

"I move over now and offer my best wishes to Barry and his family on this historic achievement," Aaron concluded, displaying infinitely more grace than Bonds, baseball fans, and perhaps even baseball itself had any right to ask of him.

Bonds then presented his helmet, gloves, and bat to a steward of the Baseball Hall of Fame for shipment to Cooperstown, where they will be enshrined forever, allowing fathers and sons to come and stare at them glumly as they bear mute witness to baseball's diminished glory.

The Nationals won the game, 8-6.

[BERIGAN]

Someone else that gets "it"

http://www.nbcsports.com/jdub/blog/

[Brad]

I haven't visited this thread or the debate for awhile but I find it laughable that it's going on. No one's mind will be changed by it, whether pro or con (and I'm definitely anti-Baroid). At any rate, it's over and he holds the record. I don't think that's debatable.

[MartyJazz]

Forgive me if this has been posted before, but here's a picture I just found of Bonds when he was a Pirate rookie

[Aggie87]

Someone else that gets "it"

http://www.nbcsports.com/jdub/blog/

That blog is too good to let it pass with just a link. Gonna paste the 8 August portion:

August 08, 2007WHAT PART OF CHEATING DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND?

Barry Bonds. Emptying out my brain on the topic:

1. Two of the more symbolic moments of the Barry Bonds 756 chase occurred in the scrums of fans fighting for the home runs Bonds hit on Saturday in San Diego and on Tuesday in San Francisco. If you watch the replay, after Adam Hughes came up with 755, he is seen hoisting the ball in his right hand as he is led away by Padres security. Then, suddenly, some dude in a camouflage Padres jersey makes a desperate--and unsuccessful-- snatch for the ball that Hughes is clutching.

Last night at AT&T Park, Matt Murphy came up with Bonds' record-breaking homer (Adam Hughes. Matt Murphy. America's sportswriters can only say, "Thank you for having such easy names. Not like that dude who collared A-Rod's 500th."). Before we even realized who had the ball, as we watched the scrum on TV, we saw a big dude in an orange jersey work his way through the mob and then suddenly toss himself on top of the pile. He was nowhere near the ball but he decided that he'd do his best to wrest the ball from whatever fan already had it.

To me, those two unidentified would-be ball thieves exemplified not only what Bonds has "accomplished" in terms of the home run mark, but also, and I'm going to get sociological on you here, why Bonds' 756 is such a polarizing number today.

There's a large faction of society that believes that it's now how you get there, it's that you get there. If you need to cheat to win a race (Ben Johnson) or sully some other candidate's reputation in order to get elected, or lip-synch your appearance on Saturday Night Live to sell your records, do it.

Then there's the other faction, among which more than a few overly idealistic--some might say overly judgmental-- journalists and parents and killjoys and probably Sheriff Andy Taylor and Richie Cunningham belong to. This is the group that believes that what truly matters is that it's how you get there.

Greg Brady could have been Johnny Bravo, sure, but he didn't want to be famous just because he "fit the suit". He wanted to be famous because his music mattered. Or, for a better and relatively more recent example, watch School Ties . Matt Damon's character is the former type, and Brendan Fraser's is the latter.

What it all comes down to is character. There's a reason that one of the only--if not the only--unifying aspects of this entire chase is Hank Aaron. Because, as anyone can see, Aaron never sacrificed his honor or integrity to achieve what he has. Barry Bonds and Bud Selig cannot say as much.

2. Bob Costas, appearing on Mike and Mike this morning, applied the equivalent of a logic smackdown to guest host Rob Parker. A columnist with the Detroit Free Press , Parker clearly positioned himself on the former side, saying basically, "It's 756 home runs, I don't care how he got there."

Costas, meanwhile--and this is absolutely no surprise-- was articulate, insightful and dead-on. Parker posited that since baseball, in terms of attendance, is more popular than ever, then why does a fan such as Costas have any problem with what's happened in the past decade or so in regard to steroids. Costas fired back that baseball was immensely popular before blacks (and Parker is black) were allowed to play and it was immensely popular before Curt Flood took his stand for free agency, but that does not mean that the game was not flawed in those eras. "Reasonable people," Costas said, "can separate the two."

Parker remained on the offensive, asking Costas how come so many people vilify Bonds as if he's the only player who ever took steroids. Costas, on the phone and clearly stupefied that Parker was receiving such a national forum to air such childish arguments, retortred, "I hope you're not including me among those who would hold such a simple-minded view."

Costas then proceeded, in as polite a way as possible, to deliver a useful analogy. He said that if the President of the United States broke the same law as a congressman, well, wouldn't we expect that the president's transgression would receive more attention because, after all, he's the prez?

The chasm between the wisdom and ability to reason of those who appear on TV and those who watch TV gets narrower each passing day. Especially in regard to ESPN, which seems to have an insatiable appetite to put new faces behind a desk.

Some people just belong on TV, either because they look good (Erin Andrews, Kirk Herbstreit) or because their words flow with reason and insight(Costas, Kirk Herbstreit). Listening to Costas on ESPN2 this morning, it was evident what a vacuum exists in sports television of men or women who are not afraid to be contrarian and bright. Costas himself--and this was beautiful--called out players "and ex-players who are now holding microphones" (were your ears burning, Rick Sutcliffe and John Kruk?) for the craven position they have taken during the Bonds chase. I don't have Costas' words in front of me verbatim, but in essence he said that you cannot state that 1) Bonds likely used performance enhancing drugs but 2) he's still the greatest player of all time, as if those are mutually exclusive assertions.

If you believe No. 1, Costas said, then how can you grant No. 2? Amen. It's not that Bonds is not a superlative ballplayer, one of the top "half dozen", as Costas asserted, who ever played the game. But if you buy the overwhelming evidence that between 1999 and say, 2004, Bonds was juicing, then you either say it's okay to cheat and call him the best player who ever lived or that it's not okay to cheat and then you cannot just grant him the tremendous offensive stats he posted from '99 on.

It's like this. You're one of the smartest students in your class. Definitely top 5%. Then you get the answers to the final exam, use them, and get the highest grade on that test. You cheated. Should your test score be wiped out? Or does the professor recognize you as the best student in the class because, even if you did cheat, you already were one of the smartest students anyway?

3. Can Pedro Gomez go home now?

4. Bud Selig does not understand leadership. Not in the least bit. As J.A. Adande said on "Around The Horn" this evening, Selig should have either had the courage of his convictions and said that he did not recognize Bonds' home run record because it's tainted by steroids, or he should have just congratulated Bonds succinctly and with class, as Aaron did.

5. Two arguments that Bonds and his apologists often use that, were I Mitt Romney, I'd tell you that "I'm sick and tired" of hearing them:

A. "Steroids can't help you hit a baseball."

No duh. But, if you already have the talent to hit a 96 m.p.h. fastball or an 88 m.p.h. slider, steroids will help you hit a baseball farther. And, they will help you see better, which is invaluable when you're standing at the plate.

B. "If you're going to indict Barry Bonds, why don't you go after everyone else who used steroids?"

Would love to. It was cheating, even if baseball did not have a specific rule against it for so long (and this, Mr. Selig, is why you will not be standing on the right side of this issue when history records this era). I'd love to examine how Brady Anderson hit 50 home runs in 1996--more than double the number he hit in any other season of his career-- or the entire lineup of the '98 Texas Rangers or the '01 Oakland A's. But, as Costas said, Bonds became the symbol of the era, the "Sultan of Syringe" as one New York tabloid put it today, because he took down baseball's greatest individual career record with the help of steroids.

6. More than a few media members noted, fondly, that Bonds showed a very human side of himself last night. That he was, almost for the first time, likeable. And that's true. He was. But who isn't at their best in a moment when so much glory is coming your way? It's how you treat people on a Tuesday in Milwaukee that is a better indicator of your personality.

Parker, on Mike and Mike , brought forth the old argument that sportswriters have it out for Bonds because he is not nice to them. I disagree. I feel that the same hubris that Bonds has shown toward the media is what made him think that he could use steroids with impunity. He put himself above others, and then he put himself above the game.

Nor did steroids "affect" Bonds' personality.

In May of 1993 Richard Hoffer of Sports Illustrated went out to San Francisco to do a feature story on Bonds, then in his first season with the Giants. Hoffer waited eight days before Bonds would finally sit down with him for a few minutes--and probably thought to himself, Thank God he doesn't play in Pittsburgh any more.

Bonds' blowing off of Hoffer actually became a source of clubhouse hilarity. The other Giants kept track of how many days Hoffer was being held hostage and it was probably only a matter of time before Ted Koppel did so, too.

7. The numbers just don't matter any more. There was a time, before performance-enhancing drugs, before East Germans who looked like cyborgs, before Ben Johnson, before Jose Canseco and Mark McGwire--and after Greg Lemond--when we cared about records. In track and field. In baseball. In the Tour de France.

Now? Do you know what the world record time in the mile is? Or in the 100 meters? Or who even holds those records?

Steroids have made many records negligible. Impure. Unworthy of our faith in them. I know for certain, as someone who was allowed to stay up just long enough to see Hank Aaron blast 715 when I was seven years old, that Bonds' 756th will not have the aura to it that Aaron's did. It can't.

8. Those hugs Bonds' teammates gave him after 756 last night? For the most part, they were perfunctory. No one denies that he is a magnificent ballplayer. You cannot take that away from him. But Barry Bonds has diminished his own legacy more than any sportswriter ever could.

It's funny. You cannot cut corners when you hit a home run. You may have blasted a ball 435 feet to dead center, but you still have to touch first, second and third base before you can claim your reward. You cannot cut the corners of the diamond. In life, though, you can. All too easily.

[Soulstation1]

I haven't visited this thread or the debate for awhile but I find it laughable that it's going on. No one's mind will be changed by it, whether pro or con (and I'm definitely anti-Baroid). At any rate, it's over and he holds the record. I don't think that's debatable.

i agree

[Dan Gould]

Forgive me if this has been posted before, but here's a picture I just found of Bonds when he was a Pirate rookie

[RDK]

I haven't visited this thread or the debate for awhile but I find it laughable that it's going on. No one's mind will be changed by it, whether pro or con (and I'm definitely anti-Baroid). At any rate, it's over and he holds the record. I don't think that's debatable.

i agree

Yeah, and i can't help but think that Good Speak is laughin' his ass off while rilin' up Dan and the others. Not that GS doesn't believe in Bonds, but that he gets more entrenched in his argument and enjoys it the more it pisses everyone off. Hell, I would too.

[Brad]

I just got the latest SI and it shows the progression in his stats (including his weight) from his rookie year until now, more than 53 pounds. That's staggering.

[Jazzmoose]

Having gained about 53 pounds since I quit smoking, I agree: it is staggering. Particularly going up stairs...

[Noj]

Jazzmoose, Jazzmoose.

(Doing my best Chris Olivarez impersonation)

[Tim McG]

Having gained about 53 pounds since I quit smoking, I agree: it is staggering. Particularly going up stairs...

I gained 53 pounds after I turned 40.

My hat size is bigger, too.

Wait!

I must be on steroids!

Sound the alarm!

Sound the alarm!

Sound the alarm!

Goody posts so much because he is on STEROIDS!!!

Oh-my-GOD!

Is posting on this BBS even valid any more?

Edited August 10, 2007 by GoodSpeak

[Dan Gould]

Let's forget about Bonds' career "record" and consider the likelihood of a 37 year old man hitting 73 homers in one season. This author did it, and the results beggar the imagination:

Beisbol Been Barry Barry Good to, uh… Barry

Posted by Precious Roy under Barry Bonds , Statistics , Baseball

Lies and Damn Lies

Barry Bonds is on the verge of breaking Hank Aaron’s all time home run record in Major League Baseball. It’s inevitable. In fact by the time you read this it might have already have happened. But, eh, nobody seems to care much. Well, nobody outside of the Bay Area or Bristol, Connecticut.

This probably stems from the fact that hardly anybody not being paid by Barry seems to like Barry very much and that people think he’s cheated his way to the record through the use of various anabolic steroids, growth hormones (both human and cow apparently), and a couple of BALCO products known as “the cream” and “the clear.”

And of course flaxseed oil.

But other than once for amphetamines, Bonds has never tested positive for any PEDs. Still, this hasn’t ended the speculation.

For a few reasons there is still rampant suspicion that Bonds’ inflated power numbers come from better living through chemistry. First, there is his involvement with BALCO, Victor Conte, and trainer Greg Anderson. Then there’s this. Finally, just look at Barry. There has clearly been a dramatic change in his physique from his earliest days as a skinny kid in a Pittsburgh Pirate uniform to the Giant (both senses) he is today.

To quote Stuart Mackenzie, “Look at the size that boy’s heed. I’m not kidding, it’s like an orange on a toothpick.”

Still most of the reporting remains focused on the feds, the remnants of the BALCO scandal, the toothless investigation by the Mitchell committee, or some other informant du jour. It’s almost as if the media and MLB are both waiting for someone to hand over a smoking gun registered to Barry with his prints on the still warm grip (“Hey look, Godot!”). What there hasn’t been much of is an examination of the probability that what Barry has done was legit from a purely statistical standpoint.

The below is attempt to do just that. It’s a analysis of Bonds’ 2001 single-season record-breaking home run mark of 73. It’s long. Sorry. But, statistically, it’s interesting because Bonds really didn’t hit 73 home runs in 2001. Or at least you can almost prove it.

Admittedly that’s a bit of an irresponsible use of the word “prove.” The numbers don’t prove anything. And Bonds actually did hit 73 baseballs that cleared the fence during that season. What the numbers do show is that it was so improbable that it would almost be more rational to believe it didn’t happen.

Chicks Dig the Long Ball

It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when steroids or other PEDs became a problem enough to compromise the historical integrity of stats in baseball, but the strike-shortened season of 1994 provides a decent enough breaking point. The numbers from that year really don’t mean much as the season was halted in August. And the following year, players started knocking the ball across zip codes.

In the entire history of baseball from 1876 to 1993, only two players—Babe Ruth in 1927 and Roger Maris in 1961—had ever hit 60 or more home runs in a single season. From 1995 to 2004 it happened six times.

Additionally, from the inception of the game through the 1993 season only 123 players had hit 40 or more home runs in a season. It was actually fewer players because, for example, Babe Ruth did it 11 times. So to be technical it’s 123 player-seasons. From 1995 through the 2004 season, there were 93 player-seasons of 40 or more home runs.

Put another way, the first 100 years of baseball had about 125 40-plus home run seasons, at the current rate, the next 100 years will have 900.

So clearly, despite baseball’s love of its own timelessness, something about the game changed. The ball is juiced. The players are just bigger and stronger. The ballparks are smaller. Expansion has diluted the pitching. In 1993 the Colorado Rockies franchise had its inaugural season, so since then, National League teams would have been launching shots in the thin Denver air. There has been all kinds of theorizing, but even every team playing every pitch of every game in Denver probably wouldn’t get you to 900.

All This Can Be Yours

What Bonds did, though, was so statistically outlandish that it can’t reasonably be explained by any or all of those (except perhaps *ahem* “bigger and stronger”). To demonstrate this, a little statistics lesson is necessary. It’s pretty straightforward as there are only three things you need to understand: a mean, a standard deviation, and a normal distribution.

If you never took a basic stats class or even went to college but you’ve watched the Price is Right, you’re two-thirds the way home.

The mean is just the arithmetic average that you learned in grade school. Add up all of your data points, and divide the sum by the number of points there are. Cake.

Standard deviation is more or less a mathematical measure of how “spread out” your data are from the mean. As a quick example, look at these two sets of ten numbers:

A) 25, 28, 29, 21, 20, 17, 29, 33, 24, 24

B) 10, 0, 190, 3, 7, 28, 4, 2, 5, 1

Both sets have the same average of 25, but set B has a much larger standard deviation because the data are much more spread out from that average. If you calculate it out, A has a standard deviation of about 4.6, while set B has one of 58.5. That’s a relatively large difference.

(The formula for standard deviation is not given here, but for the intellectually inquisitive, it’s not hard to look up. Or if you are even lazier than I am, any stats package or spreadsheet application is likely to be able to do it in a couple of keystrokes).

The last concept, the normal distribution, is probably more familiarly identifiable as a “bell curve.” If that doesn’t do it for you, either peek down the page or think of the game Plinko from the Price is Right. If you drop hundreds of pucks down the center of the Plinko board, most of them would end up bunched around the middle, some spread to the sides about the middle, and a few would be out toward the tail ends. Each puck would represent a data point, and cumulatively the pucks would look “normally” distributed. There is a mathematical function to describe the normal distribution but simply even printing it here would probably put you to sleep. Just know that it is indeed shaped kind of like a bell and it is symmetrical around the middle.

But there is a really important phenomenon of normally distributed data (and also really elegant, given how it combines all three relevant concepts here): About 68% of all your data points (your Plinko pucks) will be within one standard deviation of each side of the mean; and about 95% of your data will be within two standard deviations from the mean.

So look at the graph above. It’s of a normal distribution. The blue represents plus/minus one standard deviation, the pinkish represents plus/minus two. So for normally distributed data, almost everything sits within 2 standard deviations. If you go out to three (the green)? That’s 99.73% of your data. And that’s pretty much everything.

Don’t Know Much About History?

Back to Bonds. Again, he hit 73 home runs at the age of 37. Historically, as most baseball players have gotten into and past their mid-30s, they experience a drop in hitting power. That translates into fewer homers.

So, after going through the data, I found at least 38 baseball players who had three characteristics that made them similar to Bonds.

First, they were sluggers. This was kind of an arbitrary definition. But for these purposes, a slugger was someone who had at least one season of 30 home runs of more. There’s nothing particular to that number other than a 30-home run season is generally considered a solid benchmark of a power hitter.

Second, they played until at least the age of 37. That’s kind of self-explanatory. Bonds turned 37 in his record-setting year, so we are comparing him to players of the same age.

Third, in the season when the player turned 37, he was still an everyday player. Again, another arbitrary benchmark was chosen to define “everyday” but if the player appeared in around120 games (about 75% of the season) this was sufficient.

There are a couple of exceptions to these three criteria. Roberto Clemente is included even though his largest single-season home run total was 29. Mickey Mantle retired before age 37, so his HR total from age 36 is used. Also a few players did not play much at age 37 (Ott, Killebrew, Winfield). This is presumable because of injuries. Their numbers from age 36 were also used.

Additionally, with just a couple of exceptions, the players in the data set had a 30-HR season before 1994. This is so that the sample is (hopefully) free from having any players on PEDs in it.

In other words we are trying to get a non-steroid sample, and compare what Bonds did to that to show how statistically absurd his 73 home runs would be if he were indeed clean. Yes, players in the Seventies might have been on speed or cocaine. That’s a flaw that can’t be avoided and whether being wired on blow helps you hit more home runs or not is a separate argument.

The Older We Get, The Better We Were

Just meeting all the above criteria leaves you with a roster that reads like roll call at the Hall of Fame: Willie Mays, Mickey Mantle, Reggie Jackson, Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, Andre Dawson, Ernie Banks, Mike Schmidt, Hank Aaron, etc.

But by the time those guys hit age 37, collectively their power was clearly declining from their career highs. And the average number of home runs hit by the 38 players in the sample during the season they turned 37 was 22.32. For the same data the standard deviation was 9.19

Just think about this qualitatively for a second. For decades of baseball you’ve got all of these great hitters, just legends. And when they get old, they start hitting 22 home runs, 11, home runs, 29 home runs, etc. The only two players with remotely gaudy numbers at that age were the game’s two greatest home run hitters—Ruth with 41 and Aaron with 47. Then suddenly here comes this one guy and, when he gets to be that old, he hits 73. That’s more than a 50% increase over the next best guy!

Looking at it that way, just on the surface it seems a little outlandish.

Using that mean and standard deviation calculated above—22.32 and 9.19 respectively—and the normal distribution we can calculate precisely how outlandish it is.

Relative to that same data set, Bonds’ home run total of 73 was 5.51 standard deviations from the mean.

Actually that should read; 5.51 STANDARD DEVIATIONS FROM THE MEAN!!!!

So, what does that mean?

Well, remember from the diagram above that more than 99% of your data should be within 3 standard deviations of the mean in a normal distribution. So, based upon the statistics of players who played before the time PEDs were thought to have become a problem in baseball, we could play hundreds and hundreds and hundreds more years of baseball and we wouldn’t expect to find hardly anyone at age 37 hitting more than the mean plus 3 standard deviations, or about 50 home runs in a season (This is kind of born out in that even the greatest home run hitters ever, only managed 41 and 47).

Bonds is another 2-plus standard deviations away! There simply aren’t outliers that far out. Just liars.

Okay, cheap shot. Yes. But we can put an actual number on the improbability.

Take that 5.51 number (for those of you who have had anything beyond a basic stats class, you might also know this as a Z-score) and compare it to what’s called a standard normal. A standard normal is just a normal distribution with a mean of zero and a standard deviation of one. By using a standard normal distribution and a Z-score you can calculate the probability of what Bonds did. Ready?

It’s so remote it doesn’t even exist.

Sort of. Going up from zero, most standard normal tables stop at Z-scores of 3.89. Huh?

What that means is once you get something that is roughly 4 or more standard deviations from the mean, statistically it’s so close to a zero-probability event that statisticians don’t even bother. Remember that almost alll of the data points should be within 3 standard deviations and the farther out you go the smaller the tails get.

Bonds was 5.51. Think about that for a second.

In fact the two textbooks I own with Z-score tables both stopped short of 4. I had to go search online for a table with values large enough.

Once you get to 5.51 standard deviations, the probability of a 37-year old hitting 73 homers is .000000019 (that’s seven zeros before getting to that one-nine).

To put it another way, from a statistical standpoint, almost 53 million sluggers need to play meaningful baseball through the age of 37 before you would expect to see one guy who hits 73 home runs in a season.

Fifty. Three. Million.

So far, in the 125-year history of the game, there have been about 50 sluggers playing meaning baseball after age 37.

Again. Fifty-three million. Compare that to less than fifty.

If you think Bonds is 1-in-a-million, you are off by a factor of 53.

http://kermittheblog.wordpress.com/2007/05...od-to-uh-barry/

[Soulstation1]

Big Al

Can you add some ***** in the title of this thread

thanks

[BERIGAN]

Dan, I followed some of what that guy said ...and, he didn't even try to figure out how he did it while getting only 476 offical AB's, since he was walked 177 times that year.

[Chalupa]

So I see the Giants are starting a 3 game series vs. the Braves in Atlanta on Tuesday. Guess I'll have to watch that one on TBS. It will be interesting to see what kind of reception B*nds gets there.

[Dan Gould]

We've gone over it and over it and over it, but I just came across this article

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=hruby/060512

and even if you quibble with the numbers, its discussion of how steroid use translates into more home runs is unimpeachable.

[RDK]

This will all be a moot point anyway after robots learn how to play baseball...

[Jazzmoose]

This will all be a moot point anyway after robots learn how to play baseball...

The records are now officially meaningless. R4-X45 is using extra batteries!

[Chalupa]

Selig says not disciplining Giambi was 'appropriate decision'

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2977294

What a fucking joke.

[BERIGAN]

This will all be a moot point anyway after robots learn how to play baseball...

A robot will never hit a good splitter!!!

[Matthew]

Selig says not disciplining Giambi was 'appropriate decision'

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2977294

What a fucking joke.

I wonder if Selig has any idea what a hypocritical piece-of-crap he looks doing things like this. I'm not a Bonds apologist but this just plays into what his defenders are saying. Bonds: African-American and Selig treats him with utter disdain. Giambi: White and gets a free pass. Selig doesn't have a clue on anything.

[BERIGAN]

Selig says not disciplining Giambi was 'appropriate decision'

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2977294

What a fucking joke.

I wonder if Selig has any idea what a hypocritical piece-of-crap he looks doing things like this. I'm not a Bonds apologist but this just plays into what his defenders are saying. Bonds: African-American and Selig treats him with utter disdain. Giambi: White and gets a free pass. Selig doesn't have a clue on anything.

Ok, do you really think Selig could get away with suspending a player for using steroids, back when it wasn't against baseball's rules??? Nah, no way the player's union would give him hell for that!

And has Bond's been suspended? Any of his records overturned??

This has nothing to do with race, IMO. Sheffield is still playing, we all know he did the same shit as Bonds.

[Chalupa]

Selig says not disciplining Giambi was 'appropriate decision'

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2977294

What a fucking joke.

I wonder if Selig has any idea what a hypocritical piece-of-crap he looks doing things like this. I'm not a Bonds apologist but this just plays into what his defenders are saying. Bonds: African-American and Selig treats him with utter disdain. Giambi: White and gets a free pass. Selig doesn't have a clue on anything.

Ok, do you really think Selig could get away with suspending a player for using steroids, back when it wasn't against baseball's rules??? Nah, no way the player's union would give him hell for that!

And has Bond's been suspended? Any of his records overturned??

This has nothing to do with race, IMO. Sheffield is still playing, we all know he did the same shit as Bonds.

Doesn't matter if he took them when they were against the rules or not. Since the enactment of the Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 1990 steroids have been classified as Schedule III drugs. The players union can't defend that.