Don Fehr, Rafael Palmeiro, and Other Liars

   

    I am tired of hearing about Barry Bonds, the cheater.  As a middle-of-the-road baseball fan, I'll still pay attention to every one of his at bats--he's the greatest hitter of my lifetime, and he's rapidly approaching the title of greatest ballplayer ever (some feel that he's already there).  I'm not a San Francisco Giants fan, and I'm not an Arizona State fan.  But Barry Bonds is not a cheater.

   

    "Beef, how can you say that.  Didn't you read the Sports Illustrates excerpt from Game of Shadows?"  Read it cover to cover, just like every other issue.  It's hard to argue with the evidence those reporters have compiled over the years.

    "And what about the leaked grand jury testimony?  He even admitted to 'unknowingly' using the cream and the clear...and this guy keeps track of everything he puts in his body."  Well, if those 'leaks' are true, then he must have used steroids.

    "Then how can you say he's not a cheater?"

 

    Here's how: cheating is when you do something that's against the rules of the game.  Steroids were and are against the law for those who do not have a prescription.  But they were not against the rules.  Period.

 

    "He tainted the integrity of the game--how can you say that's not cheating?"  When Gaylord Perry threw spit-balls and Vaseline-balls and sandpaper-balls and I-don't-want-to-know-what-else-balls, that was cheating.  It was against the rules.  You guys put him in the Hall of Fame. When opposing managers steal signs from the other team, that was cheating.  Yet we still canonize those men and villianize Bonds.

    If you want to talk about Bonds as a man who broke the law, then I'd probably have to agree with you.  Look at the list of baseball players who have been arrested for drug-related charges.  The Player's Union and the League made no distinction between any illegal drugs--they had NO drug policy through the 1990s and into the early 21st century.  Let me repeat for emphasis:  Major League Baseball had no drug policy through the 1990s and the early 21st century. 

    In the eyes of baseball, drugs were not against the rules.  You hear about ball players getting caught with pot, BACs hovering around their batting average, heroin, cocaine (Doc Gooden anyone?), and steroids.  The law of the respective states and the Federal Government discerns between these illegal substances--the laws of baseball (did) not.

    Barry Bonds is not only not a cheater, he is better than the numerous players before him who dabbled in the previously mentioned substances.  Steroids will do terrible things to your body--but not as terrible as cocaine and heroin.  IF Barry took steroids, it was to get a leg up on the competition; to be the best baseball player he could be; to hit more of those home runs that the League was gobbling up revenue from while burying their head in the sand.  I don't think that's right, but I can sympathize with somebody who wants to be the best so badly that he'll try anything more than somebody who wants to waste his life on drugs that will kill you much quicker.

    If you want the real 'bad guy' in this case, I don't think you have to look much further than Donald Fehr.  Everything we hear about as a public of sports-addicted fans is probably 4-5 years behind what the people on the 'inside' already know.  If you're president of the Player's Union circa 1998, you know what Ken Caminiti, Rafael Palmeiro, and Brady Anderson are doing.  You know you're living high off the hog because players are doing what's illegal but not against the rules.  It's your job to put a testing procedure in place--or, at the very least, not to refuse to even hear discussions about a testing policy during League negotiations--to protect the vast majority of your constituency who are doing things the right way. 

    If you're Bud Selig, it's your job to dump the blatant conflict of interest you have as an owner-commissioner (this happened about 10 years too late), hear the whispers, and acknowledge the problem before it becomes an epidemic. When androstendione nearly took down the bounce-back, feel-good, revenue-rejuvenating summer of 1998, it was your job to make it clear to the public that baseball is going to have SOME policy on steroid use.

    If you're Barry Bonds, your job is to hit as many home runs as you possibly can.  

    I don't particularly care for Barry Bonds.  He seems to be a me-first kind of guy, prickly not just to the press but to everyone around him, and he's (by all indications) broken many laws against steroid use and may have hurt many people in the process (i.e. his Mistress, his family, his former wife).  But you can't call him a cheater.  To be a cheater, you have to do something against the rules.  He may not be Roberto Clemente when it comes to his personal side, but he's not Gaylord Perry either.

    There are thousands of criminals in the long history of baseball: add Barry to that list if you find the evidence compelling enough.  There have been many more cheaters, and that's a list that there's no proof he deserves to be on.  On Beef's list?  The only way to fairly measure him now is with numbers that nobody can argue: 715.  That's good enough for #2 and counting in my book.

 

Ols: We induct cheaters into the hall of fame, and then pretend that Barry bonds is one to justify hating him.  good plan.

           

 

  

the rest of the thoughts            5.30.06