Letters to the Editor
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"Summer is just a time to wait for college football to start"
An even dirtier sport.
A close friend of mine played major D1 football and estimated that 75% of the guys on his team were juiced. Another friend of ours played for a small D2 school and said it was about 50%. Either way, it's everywhere.
Not saying anything one way or the other - just mentioning.
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the eating and the having of the media cake
Aren't I part of the media-industrial complex that has been rightly raked over the coals over the past few years for almost universally ignoring the exploding performance-enhancing-drug issue in American non-Olympic sports, especially baseball, from the '80s onward?
It's critically important that reporters look under every stone, examine every bit of muck, and do hard hitting journalistic reporting that gets to the truth of the matter. It's just that nobody wants to read it.
Exactly the same thing is happening with Iraq, and a thousand other important stories. We want for there to be good reporting; we want to know that our leaders can't get away with scummy behavior and lying and failure and coverups. We just don't feel like reading the reporting that is generated on the way.
In the current case, nobody cares about some schlub who dealt drugs. The story is important, sure, but not really interesting. Name some big names, and it will make people sit up and listen. Nobody cared that Gonzales made a thousand unethical choices, but as soon as he made a single high profile mistake, the media was all over him. Same thing.
My opinion: keep up the digging and the muck-raking. People won't care, until it really matters, and then they'll care deeply (and be pissed that not enough work was done before that nobody wanted to read).
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Put me down in favour of performance-enhancing drugs...
Umm, make that "put me down in favour of your continued writing about performance-enhancing drugs". Yours is the only sports column I read anymore, and whenever I watch TV sports there's a virtual asterisk in the upper right corner of my peripheral vision.
I was a serious athlete myself at one time. Most of the allure of watching these sports was in appreciating how much stronger, faster and quicker the pros were than I was. My own abilities gave me a benchmark by which to judge what I was watching, and it was fun, even awe-inspiring.
Baseball, football, basketball and -yes, hockey- long ago moved from the realm of athletic achievement to freak show. Barry Bonds should be barnstorming minor league parks, not chasing major league records.
I blame a complicit media.
Keep writing what you write.
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As each day passes
Ken Griffey Jr's drug-free accomplishments shine brighter. I'll remember the 90s for Ken Griffey Jr., not roidheads like Klesko, Caminetti, BigMac, Sosa, Canseco and the list goes on and on and on and on. Ken Giffey Jr was the best player of the Steriod era, and he wasn't on steriods. That sent me a pretty strong message as a youth baseball player.
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Griffey
Pales next to Bonds. He's not even close.
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Timing
First off, please continue to write about this topic.
Now...
Part of the reason it was buried was the timing. It was no accident that Selig released this info on a Friday evening. Let alone a Friday night when there are 8 NBA playoff series going on, 4 hockey series going on, and the NFL draft. The sports networks focus on their money events. ESPN has the draft once a year, and very limited amount of playoff games. They weren't going to focus on this story.
The White House pulls this trick all the time, why not Selig? The steroids scandal when not in Outside the Lines, generally gets its coverage in print. The major print media sits for 60 hours before its going to really going to get covered.
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And If You Talk Back
I'm going to start reciting his Reds stats over the last 8 years. In a hitters park.
Let's put it this way---It probably ranks as the most stupendous waste of money in the history of sports in terms of signing an established talent.
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No One Else In Baseball History
Has 400 homers and 400 steals........Bonds is 700 and 500.
If someone wants to chalk that up to some pills or injections, it's a free country--freedom of stupidity.
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Need some names
Some fans care about widespread steroid use in baseball, what it says about the integrity of the game, etc., and some don't. My guess is that both camps will find it hard to tune back into this lengthy saga until there are specific names associated with revelations like this latest batboy story.
We know that there are plenty of stories like these waiting to surface. As long as they continue to appear without naming names, I could write one myself - I would only need my imagination and a black marker.
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Yawning for Bonds
The sports media didn't bother to cover the Randomski story because it didn't involve Barry Bonds. In fact, the Randomski story will probably deflect criticism from Bonds. (You mean there's a whole baseball lineup of guys involved in "performance enhancement"!! Oh my!!! Who would have thunk it!)
Yes, the Radomski story gets in the way of the singularly easy sport writing story that Bonds is the center of all evil.
Cheers.
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I know, it's weird
Rayon Fog wrote:
An even dirtier sport. [snip] Not saying anything one way or the other - just mentioning.
Yeah, I know. It's weird, but for reasons I don't completely understand, I love college football as much as ever while I stopped caring about baseball.
Maybe it's just that my love of college ball goes deeper, maybe it's college does a better illusion of amateurism, maybe I'm just more forgiving of kids getting everyone but themselves rich.
Whatever it is, you do have a valid point.
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Problem is roid investigations never lead anywhere
How can we get worked up about these steroid stories when Bonds, Giambi, Sosa and Gary Matthews Jr are all playing and doing well right now?
Until baseball starts suspending or banning their top tier stars for obvious abuse, why does it matter when they bust these selling rings? Its sort of the reverse of regular drug enforcement. There, we want to see the kingpins brought down, not the low level dealers or the users. But in steroids, we don't care so much about the dealers or even the kingpins. We want to see the abusers brought low, and that just plain hasn't happened.