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Be Mad At Baseball, Not Barry Bonds
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| Be Mad At Baseball, Not Barry Bonds |
| 08.07.07 (3:58 pm) [edit] |
For baseball, the month of August is affectionately referred to as the dog days of summer in which players are grinding their way through the midpoint of the season. This weekend proved to be a losing dog worthy of ill treatment from the likes of Michael Vick for the former national pastime as Barry Bonds finally reached baseball's pinnacle by tying Henry Aaron's career home run record.
Henry Aaron who surpassed baseball god Babe Ruth in the late 1970s has primarily shunned Bonds and refuses to root him on because he believes he cheated by taking steroids and therefore doesn't deserve any accolades.
Its hard to disagree with Aaron who had to play through a level of racism and death threats only seen before by Jackie Robinson as he approached Ruth for baseball supremacy.
Bonds has only had to weather the storm of being labeled a cheater and a federal grand jury investigation.
For the most part, the media is all to willing to downplay his accomplishment and other baseball legends are becoming more and more vocal about his tainted record.
Major League Baseball (MLB) commissioner Bud Selig attended the record tying game after weeks of speculation that he would not, and as fans cheered for Bonds, Selig sat on his hands as the holiest record in all of sports was made anew.
As an avid sports fan I do not condone steroids or any other form of cheating and I believe they should be punished heavily, but I don't get all the disrespect pointed directly at Bonds.
This issue is more about baseball and its lack of integrity than Bonds himself. After all, the type of performance enhancing drugs Bonds is accused of using was not banned until a couple of seasons ago.
Football and basketball outlawed them decades ago and have strong disciplinary policies to boot. Even through scandal, baseball struggled with the decision to ban them and to enforce strong penalties against those who would violate the rules.
To its credit, the MLB finally entered the league of honorable sport. But up until that time, any baseball player holding any record or not may have taken the cheating pills, creams or injections including Ruth and Aaron.
We'll never know, baseball never conducted tests. Baseball knew steroid use was pervasive in its sport and chose to do nothing until public pressure finally forced its hand. Since they began testing, several players have been caught cheating, none of them named Barry Bonds and he's still physically heavier than he was 18 seasons ago.
If the baseball traditionalists want an asterisk next to Bonds' achievement in the record books, then they should apply it across the board for every record held during the pre-testing era.
Blame Bud Selig and the executives of the sport for compromising the sport. Their inaction is not fair to the fan, Henry Aaron, Barry Bonds or the minor leaguer with dreams of a baseball legacy of his own.
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