Letters to the Editor
droogoy
Published Letters: 590 Editor's Choice: 9
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Oh yeah
[Read the article: When Barry passes Hank]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Thrasher wrote:
Bottom line is another Black man will be the home run champion and there is nothing Hank, Bud or white sports media types or white folks can do about ..Nuttin..lol,lol,lol
Of course, we can't. But what we can do is witthold extending any gravitas to the new "record" or "record holder" - firmly affixing an asterisk * to that mark, now and forever. If the media imps and other pandering puckwads wish to bestow gravitas and pseudo-certification - that is their prerogative. But speaking for myself, and I am sure millions of other true fans, most of us won't. We will give a hearty ho-hum, yawn and forget this fool- meanwhile keeping the flame of Aaron's REAL triumph alive in our discussions, interactions, etc.
The fact is that SF knew it would be a shitwad last place team, and the only reason they brought back this 43-year old freak was to have a chance to beat Aaron's record by his cheating. This is the ONLY thing the miserable ass Giants' fans have to rave about.
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Bogus analogy
[Read the article: When Barry passes Hank]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Barton wrote:
If the Prozac I take helps me do my job better in that I can be more effective at work when I am not depressed, am I a cheater? Give me a break!
Your comparison is BOGUS. Prozac is not a performance-enhancing drug like what Bonds took. Basically, you are not “enhancing” anything you do at work (e.g. vastly increasing productivity by a factor 2, 3), you are numbing your wage-slave brain to the sundry indignities endured every day in corporate America (or its lackey offshoots), including your conscious recognition of how they expropriate your labor – and exploit you. Thus, PROZAC enables you to complete the work you’d ordinarily do to a reasonable standard – not do THREE times as much as you did the day before!
By contrast, the second season after Bonds started using steroids his homer production jumped by a factor of TWO. This is beyond the expectation of mere coincidence or any natural ability he already possessed.
I have NO problem with wage slaves keeping their cabinet stocked with Prozac to preserve their sanity in their cubicles (themselves invitations to psychosis) but I do have a problem with a highly paid athlete taking steroids to ramp up his stats, numbers and earn a bogus gravitas he doesn’t merit.
Because thousands of ball players may do it doesn’t make it "right" or acceptable, any more than thousands of people cheating on their taxes makes it right.
Btw, you can peddle that "it's just a sport" malarkey all you want, but the bottom line is that millions of kids look to sports figures as examplars, even more than their teachers. That carries a lot of heft, and thus it is insipid to tell us not to critique or complain sports figures when they cross the line, as Bonds has.
In addition, ALL of this goes beyond the fact he's also a nasty punk. Leaving all his negative persona aside, and how his behavior gets at many fans - he STILL doesn't merit any respect or recongition for breakin' Hammerin' Hank's record.
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Rules
[Read the article: When Barry passes Hank]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Cheating - by definition - requires that rules be broken.
Not at all. While pointy-headed nabobs, as in the media - will always come back to the "rules" bilge, the fact is that what Bonds did WAS cheating, in every moral and ethical sense. It doesn't matter if it was not then in the rules.
According to your reasoning, it was A-ok to have as many slves as you wanted to own, living in the Confederacy in 1863. Hell, there were NO laws against it!
My point is that slavery has always been immoral, and a disgusting, inhuman practice, irrespective of its legal position. In other words, legality usually FOLLOWS morality. It seldom if ever leads it. But people know what is going on and where the bear sits with the buckwheat.
Just because there were no "laws against slavery" back in 1863, didn't mean owning slaves was "acceptable" or "not wrong". Just because there were no baseball "rules" against 'roids during much of Bonds tenure, doesn't mean that using them was "acceptable" or "not wrong". It was still CHEATING!
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ROTFL
[Read the article: When Barry passes Hank]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]kstone wrote:
All of this anguish is ridiculous. Simply put, Barry Bonds is the greatest all around player since his godfather, Willie Mays
Yeah, right. And Bush is legit, no "occupant", and the greatest president we have had since FDR.
Don't fuckin' make me laugh. It's too early.
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Bingo! You made my case
[Read the article: When Barry passes Hank]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]sansho1 wrote:
Within the rules of the society at large (read: laws), taking steroids was always cheating.
Bonds hasn't been caught, I believe, in part because he has connections at the highest levels of the illegal steroids industry,
Thanks, you made my case even more succinctly than my earlier effort. Of course it was always cheating, and one can't simply summarily resort to semantic tricks to dodge that unsavory fact. It's as daft as asserting that merely because some countries don't have laws against rape, it isn't "rape". A vile or reprehensible act is always wrong by its nature, not because it is defined so by a "rule".
I also agree that Bonds has avoided detection because of his connections. I also believe the fucker LIED in his answers to questions posed about his use.
That he has done things Aaron wouldn't have dreamed of doing makes him the Nation's No. 1 Sports Renegade & Turd, and a disgrace to the game, to its fans and history, and this has nada to do with race.