Letters to the Editor
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Er, 30 months is a lot
There's a point here in this otherwise fine piece where you say Bonds could get 30 years, but actually experts think it could be more like 30 months.
OUCH!
Maybe you didn't intend it this way, but 30 months in the slammer is still a lot! I can't imagine Bonds's harshest critics would want him to die in jail (which 30 years would make a distinct possibility); for me personally adding an asterisk would do. 2 1/2 years for doing something that--let's face it--in one way or another the current system begged him to do (chase records by any means necessary, hit homers like some crazy batting machine) strikes me as more than adequate punishment.
Dont get me wrong: I've never liked the guy much and hate his example. But we've all been giving him strokes for years. The pathology is partly our own.
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Sure, but that's not quite the point
He hasn't been indicted for (obligatory insert of "allegedly") using steroids, he's been indicted for lying about it. To federal law enforcement officials.
Lying to yourself? Sad, but not our problem.
Lying to the public? Also sad, but understandable given (as John Randolph noted) the public's own hypocrisy on the issue.
Lying to the feds under oath? Stooopid.
At least now we know that while his skull may have grown, the brain inside? Not so much.
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This is awful...
If Bonds is indicted and goes to prison it obviously reduces the chances of him batting clean-up for the Wild Things and going 0-4 with runners in scoring position and striking out 3 out of those 4 times against Kalamazoo, thereby providing us with the potential of a roid induced rage attack on some poor schlep pitcher on the mound for Kalamazoo who in all reality will be working in accounts receivable for some small mid-western company in a year or two...
...and have you seen the Wild Thing's mascot, the, er, Wild Thing. Looks like something out of a Sid and Marty Krofft Saturday morning t.v. show or the one they rejected for the Banana Splits. Which leads me to want to pine about the dire state of children's television today compared to my youth but that's another story...
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OK, what am I missing here?
Professional baseball, like all professional sport, is an entertainment industry. Player's salaries come from the sale of tickets and advertising to people who want to be entertained.
Since the entertainment of sports comes from people performing at the peak of their physical powers, a lot of abnormal stuff is done to athletes' bodies. For years it's been perfectly acceptable to drill holes in pitchers arm bones and thread ligaments from their legs through the holes, so they can prolong their pitching careers.
In other entertainment industries, nobody thinks twice about whether Angelina Jolie puts botox in her lips or some other actor has his buttocks surgically padded.
Performance enhancing drugs enhance performance. Duh. People pay to watch sports because they want to see...performance. What's the problem?
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King Baby, Don't be sleepin' on the Bills
Buffalo is going to SHOCK. THE. WORLD.
Well, we would have if Lynch's ankle were healthy.
The big betting line here is the over-under on arrests in Orchard Park because of the late start. I'm not saying that giving Bills fans 10 or 12 hours of tailgaiting time before a game they may be out of after the first quarter is making the local authorities a tad nervous, but I believe they contracted Blackwater to come in and do security.
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If Bonds goes to prison..
... it won't tell us much about Bonds but it will send out a powerful message to many baseball fans, especially the impressionable young, that doing steroids without a valid medical purpose is stupid and dangerous, not to mention ILLEGAL
A few weeks ago in a previous letter on the subject, I mentioned a muscular young man aged 21 at my work who had built up his body using steroids because his girlfriend had told him he was not "big" enough. I mentioned that he was prone to sudden rages and loss of temper and that recently he had got into a fight in a bar, badly hurt someone, and had been arrested, leading to his suspension from work.
Two weeks ago I saw a familiar looking name in a small article in the local Sunday paper. The same guy had been in a single vehicle accident at 3:35 on Thursday morning and had died on the spot.
Now, I cannot absolutely prove that steroids caused his death. No doubt alcohol, a legal product, was partly to blame and it would not have been a bad idea to use a seatbelt. But I strongly believe that if he had not been using illegal steroids, he would mostl likely still be alive, because the chain of events that led to his decline might have been interrupted.
OK, he was probably a pretty worthless individual. He certainly did not have Bond's societal value as a person blessed with innate psychomotor skills that enabled him to hit a ball a long way with a stick.
But someone said to me: "Hey, Brian was a buddy of your, wasn't he?" Well, he wasn't a buddy, but he was a young person in need of guidance who sometimes asked my opinion about relationship matters.
He might or might not have been influenced by seeing someone like Bonds go to jail for using steroids illegally and then lying about it under oath. But in as much as young people are influenced by anybody or anything, they might be influenced against using steroids when they see a big shot like Bonds in the slammer.
Certainly top athletes often talk about being "role models", so Bonds could provide some community service by modeling the role of prisoner for liars and cheats.
So no, this indictment will not tell us anything about Bonds, but that is not the point.
I know that you, King, are a libertarian who believes that all drugs should be legally available over-the-counter without prescription and that the weak should go to the wall, hell, or whatever their ultimate destination, but I just disagree profoudly with your basic position, because if it was implemented (which it never will be), it would be quite disastrous.