Barry Bonds vs Bob Costas

[crokett]

[Bob Costas] is a little midget man who knows [nothing] about baseball,

In response to which Bob said:

As anyone can plainly see, I'm 5-6 1/2 and a strapping 150, and unlike some people, I came by all of it naturally

HAHAHAHAHAHA!

[Ken Massingale]

NBC news had a spot last night on sports 'stars' issues and during the brief dialog about Bonds it was mentioned that Hank won't be there or participate when the juicer 'breaks' the record.

[Uncle Cracker]

If I were Hank, I wouldn't be there either. "Juiced" or not, it's Bonds' moment. It's not Hank's place to be there taking bows in the middle of what will surely be a circus of controversy. He has nothing to prove, and none of us needs to be reminded that he got his the old-fashioned way.

I do feel it's important to note, however, that through the majority of Bonds' career, steroid use in MLB was not illegal. His biggest error is to deny he used, or to say that when and if he did use, he had no knowledge of exactly what he was injecting in his own butt.

It's all kind of moot, anyway, because if he wants to hang around long enough, or can find somebody still willing to pay his ridiculous salary, A-Rod will easily break the record and leave Bonds a virtually forgotten man. He's already so far ahead of the pace Bonds set that it's no contest.

[Stormbringer]

I do feel it's important to note, however, that through the majority of Bonds' career, steroid use in MLB was not illegal.

Says who? They were illegal, MLB just didn't spell it out that players couldn't take them, nor should they have since the steroid act of 1990 reiterated the fact that they were classifed as an illegal drug. It's a shame that grown men have to be told that they can't take illegal drugs so they can't use the excuse "Well nobody told me..." Look at how many gold medals were stripped from athletes back in the 80's and 90's.

Very true abouty A-rod. If he stays healthy "they" feel he'll get over 800. Could you imagine how many Ruth would have if he played today? 800? 900? 1000? And that's a guy who lived on cigarettes, beer and hot dogs.

Greg

[Uncle Cracker]

Could you imagine how many Ruth would have if he played today? 800? 900? 1000? And that's a guy who lived on cigarettes, beer and hot dogs.

He wouldn't have made it... Today's beer, cigarettes and hot dogs would have killed him off quick.

[Perfidiajoe]

How many would Willie Mays have hit had he played in good parks, not in the old Polo Grounds, one of the deepest parks ever in baseball, & then Candle Stick Park W/ the wind always blowing in?

[gwyneth]

As a few intelligent writers noted when Aaron was nearing 714, an asterisk slapped on only for a season with more games doesn't begin to cover it. For the last 100 years, baseball rules have shifted back and forth, sometimes favoring the hitter, sometimes the pitcher, then changing again to compensate, and so on--there's absolutely no way to equalize conditions between two different eras, even without the different lengths of the seasons.

For that matter, when the seasons were shorter the traveling was much more arduous--Pullman cars, not team planes.

BTW, in Ruth's playing days marijuana and several other drugs were still legal. And baseball didn't crack down on amphetamines until the late 70s or 80s--remember the greenies in Ball Four?

However, re Mays: it would probably be fair to multiply all stats for African-American players during the first decade of integration by 1.2 or 1.25--considering how their best years were behind them, the really difficult conditions they faced traveling and living, and so on. The author of a new book about Mays was on Cspan2 a couple of weeks ago and said the ONLY place Willy and Rachel Mays could find to live their first year in Brooklyn was a small room in a boarding house.