I shamelessly went out and asked Random House for a review copy of The Mind of Bill James (my southern upbringing makes that sort of pleading hard, but we’re always ready for a handout) and they sent me one. Review to come. Thanks to JC for the instructions.
They got both my names wrong on the package, even though I only communicated via email. Go figure. See comment at 3:35 in the last post. Next I am going to lobby Marcus Giles to name his next daughter Thomasun Kae.
RIP Kirby Puckett
Sorry to hear that about Puckett.
Guess we know which game ESPN Classic will be showing any time now.
I am glad I don’t have ESPN Classic then. The following event would take place.
Buck: Here is Justice. High fly ball deep center feild, Pucket back…
Me: GO TO HELL KIRBY PUCKET (oh wait, you sold your soul…)
Buck: Here is Liebrant’s pitch to Pucket. High and deep. We will see you tomorrow! (as Buck high fives everyone around him, he was pulling for the Twins)
Me: I wish you would die Kirby Pucket…oh wait.
Well, I heard the news about Puckett just after watching the movie “Munich.” Not surprisingly, my current outlook on life is pretty bleak. Amazing how fast and suddenly you can die, huh? Very upsetting.
At least he made the HoF during his lifetime.
Helluva movie though…
Barry Bonds: ‘I Won’t Retire Until I’ve Tarnished Every Record In The Book’
Much as the ’91 WS stung, I always thought how cool it would have been to root for Kirby Puckett. Turns out he wasn’t that great a guy — still a sad day, though.
the ’91 series was the best baseball I’ve ever seen. Every other time the Braves have lost, I’ve just hated who ever beat them. I wish neverending papercuts and splinters on Jim Leyritz, Kevin Brown, and Carlos Beltran but the Twins and the ’91 series was different. I was bummed the Braves lost, but still liked the Twins and was just impressed with the way they play the game… and Puckett was the biggest reason for this.
Puckett is one of the guys that got me started on baseball. The 91 series was the best I have ever seen and Kirby was a big part of that. God bless him.
But you couldn’t have been impressed with the way Kent Hrbek played the game.
No respect for any Twin, except Black Jack.
The rest of those nasty corn-fed rednecks can kiss off. Hrbek and his raping of Gant. The little snot-wad (future yankee) chucky knaublach at 2nd. And the mullets, dont forget the mullets. Scott Erickson’s brief flirtation with a pitching career. Worst of all, in personality and mulletude, Dan Gladden, who tried to kill gregg olson on live tv. I fee dirty just for typing the name.
I think all Braves fans would share my distaste for those unsportsmanlike dirtbags, if not for the category-5 white-trash hurricane that was the ’93 phillies.
It was easier to smile after the WS loss to the Twins than it was after the Jays series, or the Yankees series, or any subsequent series, because when we lost the first WS we still had hope for the future. No way could we know how many times we’d come so close but just short.
I agree with doubledawg. Pucket was a good ball player, but I am tired of hearing about him. I don’t think he deserves to be in the HOF more than Murph or Jack Morris. These people on ESPN whant to make him out to be the greatest thing ever, one person even called in to a radio staion and said he would have been better than Mickey Mantle, had he played a few more seasons. MICKEY MANTLE!
Here is a link to something everyone should read.
http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/baseball/news/2003/03/11/si_puckett/
No doubt Kirby was a terrific ballplayer and I think he is a HOF player (although we can all name players with better credentials who aren’t in the HOF), but I couldn’t watch Espn coverage for more than a couple minutes last night. You would have thought Tim Kurkjan was Kirby’s firstborn or something.
As for the 91′ series, I don’t remember much about Kirby. My memories are of screaming at bleepin Lonnie Smith and the Ogre Hrbek.
Smitty, I agree that Puckett’s reputation is a lot better than he was as a ballplayer, but why exactly is that article “something everyone should read”? Is it your opinion that everybody needs to know about every bad thing everyone’s ever done?
As for the 91′ series, I don’t remember much about Kirby
Pretty amazing, considering he won Game 6 with the HR off Liebrandt and saved Game 7 with the catch at the wall to rob Gant.
I had no strong ill will against Puckett, that play against the glass was classic.
However, in defense of smitty, i think the article is relevant. Puckett got into the HOF on the “good guy”, “tough break” vote. It sucks to have a career shortened by illness, but why should chronic eye problems get you in the hall, but knee problems lead people to say you flamed out too soon for consideration. Albert Belle has far superior numbers. Albert Belle has a degenerative HIP (as opposed to eye) that ended his career short of the HOF benchmarks. Albert Belle has a snowballs chance in hell of making the HOF, because of his personality. So, the fact puckett like to beat, harass, threaten, and sexually assault women off the field is very relevant. I’m not willing to praise any man that is capable of treating his wife in such a manner, no matter how spunky and clutch he was on the field.
In 2001, following Belle’s retirement, the New York Daily News’s venerable columnist Bill Madden wrote: “Sorry, there’ll be no words of sympathy here for Albert Belle. He was a surly jerk before he got hurt and now he’s a hurt surly jerk…He was no credit to the game. Belle’s boorish behavior should be remembered by every member of the Baseball Writers’ Association when it comes time to consider him for the Hall of Fame.”*
In Belle’s 1st year of Hall of Fame eligibility, he garnered only 7.7% of the baseball writers’ votes.**
* shamefully, wikipedia
** Id.
AJC reporting a trade is in the mix (at a public lab and can’t look it up, but so says the forum) that Thomson for Nevin.
Nevin’s been injury-plagued.. could this be the JD Drewesque awakening?
I know what Kirby did in the 91 series, but everything is overshadowed by my hatred of Hrbeck.
It’s just the persistence of memory, I believe. Albert Belle was a straight up jerk his entire career, and was duly despised. Puckett turned out to be maybe a worse guy, but throughout his career he really did exude joy, hustle, and exuberance. The subsequent revelations must have been exceedingly difficult to reconcile, especially for those who were young Twins fans back in the day. Yeah, the writers should probably have known better, but if others choose to remember the Puckett they thought they knew, I’m cool with that.
1) I hate that deal. It literally is making me sick.
2) I’m not saying it’s not relevant for HOF voting. I agree that character should be taken into consideration. And I agree that I have no respect for a man who cheats on his wife, beats his wife, and beats the woman with whom he cheated on his wife. But I still dispute the fact that “everyone should read” that article. Maybe “every baseball writer with a HOF vote” should have read it. Maybe “every woman thinking about getting in a relationship with Kirby.” Maybe this is just a semantics debate, but I maintain that nobody has to publicly confess all sins in front of everyone.
I think we may pull off a trade this spring if one of the young pitchers can show they are ready for primetime. However, Nevin kind of scares me. I know he has been a terrific hitter at times, but so was Mondesi.
I agree with Dix to an extent: The ’91 Series ended with a feeling of future hope. But personally, I found it crushing. The way that season went, there was never a moment where I thought Atlanta would lose the WS. For a million reasons, the ’91 Braves season remains my favorite. (Other contenders: the 1980 Dawgs, which ended in drunken joy, and the 1980 Falcons, which ended in frozen chokedom.)
Also, if Lonnie Smith doesn’t get lost on the basepaths (thanks to a deke from a rookie secondbaseman), Puckett’s legend is a tiny bit smaller. In the collective mind, his Game-6 HR would resonante about as large as Albert Pujols’ Game-5 shot.
I think he deserves to be in the HoF. He was obviously a great player and, if you’re a lover of numbers compilers, you must take Puckett’s illness into consideration.
Again, I give extra respect for those guys who play big in the biggest games, and Puckett did that. Four series (all won by the Twins), 24 games, with these numbers: 309/361/536. Just like his career numbers (318/360/477), but more power. Props to Kirby.
At some point I will write my (planned but completely in my head) piece comparing Puckett to Dale Murphy. In brief… I think both should be in the Hall, but it’s clear to me that Puckett was more qualified, in that he had one year (1988) that was better than anyone from the Murphy Group and more good years than any of them. He was a terrific player for ten seasons in a row. I was going to say that his brief career helped in that he didn’t have a decline phase, but he played until he was 35 and had one of his best years then. I don’t think that hang-around value should matter that much. Throw in the postseason heroics and it’s an easy pick.
Thomson for Nevin would be a really bad idea.
I agree with doubledawg – very good posts. Not to dance on Kirby’s grave or anything, but IMHO death is a time to remember the deceased as they were alive, warts and all. This can be taken too far (see the guy who takes shots at Harry Caray, e.g.) but is better than the alternative (the treatment of Saint Ronald Reagan, e.g.).
What I take away from the Puckett/Belle comparison is that sportswriters have little insight into the character of the players they cover. By all accounts, Kirby Puckett was a friendly, engaging guy that was impossible not to like. Albert Belle was the exact opposite. But now it seems like Belle is a better person than Puckett was. Keep that in mind when you hear from some writer about what a jerk that Bonds guy is 🙂
Would love to see that analysis.
Up in here in Yankeeland, the HoF conversation is always Puckett-vs.-Mattingly. Careers ended early by injury/illness with career numbers almost identical.
Of course, Mattingly’s high seasons are so high, while Puckett’s numbers remain more consistent from season to season.
Upon closer reading, I think that the Nevin thing is most likely the case of people reading too much into the idle speculation of a reporter, as happens sometime.
1. The AJC writer is doing a story on Kyle Davies and notes that the Braves don’t really have a spot for him.
2. He knows that Thomson is the most tradeable commodity on the Braves’ staff and that the Rangers showed interest in the past.
3. He knows that the Braves are not happy with their first base situation.
4. He knows that the Rangers have no use for Nevin on their current roster.
So he puts all this together and invents a possible Nevin-for-Thomson trade even though the Braves are unlikely to add that much payroll.
This is interesting …. it is a salary map for all MLB. By clicking in you can get a map just for the Braves. Not sure if it is 100% correct – it has us paying Hudson $14M, which is a lot
http://home.comcast.net/~ewannebo/baseball/
The Boston Globe reported a couple days ago that the Red Sox should pursue Andruw when he becomes a free agent at the end of this season.
The only problem with that theory is that Andruw’s under contract through 2007.
Such morons. Boy, those northerners sure are ignorant, aren’t they, NY METS?
johnb, the Braves are due paying Hudson $10M of signing bonus and salaries of 4M in 2006. Hudson’s deal signed in the last offseason is a 4yr-47M deal. It is certainly not a cheap deal. That’s why the Braves have high expectation on him.
Stu, perhaps the northerners are thinking the Braves may trade Andruw to the Red Sox for Coco Crisp in the next offseason.
Thomson for Nevin? May I ask why? What do we need him for? I’m not a big LaRoche fan, but I would much rather have him at 1B than Phil Nevin. And starting pitching is too precious a commodity to give up for something like that. A lot of teams need pitching, is Phil Nevin all we can get?
Hey good news, Brian Jordan has been taking grounders at first, and he even started the game against the Tigers at first, so that means that the Braves can keep Jordan and not have to trade for Nevin. Oh crap, that doesnt’ sound good at all does it.
I look back fondly on all of the Braves post-seasons, especially the 91 and 92 series. I had spent the 80’s (we got TBS in 1980) enjoying the Braves but resolved to the fact they would never compete after the brief runs in 81 and 82. The uniform change in ’87 (remember the parade to show them off?) offered little hope. And when they removed Dale’s mole, oy vey!!!
That all changed in 91, thanks to the greatest pitcher of all time, Alejandro Pena, and a young gopher-toothed streaky upstart named Brian Hunter.
That season will never be topped for me. Neither will the ending, Rocky I-esque as it was. Seeing Kirby in the past few days reminds me that heaven is a cold October evening in Fulton County Stadium doing the chop. ’92 was even more dramatic, if a little less magical.
I don’t have a point. Go Braves.
Friendship,
Jac
For all you Bonds-haters & steroid-doubters, you may wanna check out SI tomorrow. It excerpts a book called “Game of Shadows,” which purports to specifically detail his steroid use and its effects.
According to the book, Bonds was upset with the attention that McGwire & Sosa got in ’98 and went steroid-crazy after that.
Yeah, SI online has a lot up right now. It looks like Bonds is not only dirtier in terms of steroid usage, but is also an even bigger asshole than previously thought. I really hope this drives him to retire. This is a huge story though.
As a Braves fan, I will always count my blessings that he didn’t start using until after realignment. Specifically, after the Last Great Pennant Race.
Yeah, Bonds was plenty good already, and his ’93 season was unreal.
Y’know, the whole Bonds thing aside, I kinda miss those Pirates.
I think they’re the only team I don’t hold a permanent grudge against for beating the Braves . . . oh, right. Well, my point is those were some fun days, before losing in the World Series got real old and while it was still just fun to be there.
Losing in the World Series at least means you get to the Series. The Braves haven’t gotten there in seven years. At this point, getting to the Series would not be “real old”. It would be awesome.
I concur, JoeyT. And jac, where’s the Andrews-drool? You disappoint me.
I just checked out the SI excerpt and… wow. I know this is weird to say, but I used to be a Bonds fan. I liked him because he was good. During the whole decade of the 1990’s, he was just so unbelievably good.
But, Jesus. I mean, I knew he was an asshole. But I didn’t realize he was possibly the biggest ever–while at the same time doing more drugs than Keith Richards. He makes Bobby Brown look like Wayne Brady.
cattle steroids? fertility drugs? post-menopausal hormones? and they say california will change ya… Not Barry, he’s just the same ol’ ovulating, bovine, falsetto we knew and hated in pittsburgh.
Honestly, I’ve reached a point where I can no longer think of anything else bad to say about the guy. Bonds has reached the Jacko stage. Its reached the point of truly sad, inexplicable, and tragic circumstance that makes one really question their own internal demons and motivations…. ok, thats BS, the guy’s a world class dickhead who may or may not be growing a vagina and/or horns. Lets just point and laugh.
Is the online article the same one that’s in the magazine or should I go buy it? This is one time I don’t mind shelling out $3 or however much it is. What a story.
Guess what? BP still wants to move Chipper to left field. More later…
Frenchie just replaced Damon in WBC game 1. USA up 1-0 on a D.Lee homer.
Chipper’s still on the bench I believe.
Chipper replaced A-Rod at 3rd in the 7th inning. Still 1-0, bottom 7th, U.S. batting.
Chipper goes yard and its 2-0. First pitch he saw.
U-S-A!
did he just go yard in the wbc off of his mlb teammate? that’s wrong on so many levels
And it was Villarreal he took deep. Oscar got Derrek Lee, though.
Too bad for Villareal. Good to see Chipper swinging the bat so well early.
Good thing Oscar won’t have to face that guy during the season 🙂
These games need to happen at night.
You know what? I’m still a Bonds fan. The hell with it. I know he’s a jerk and a cheater, but at least he knows he’s a jerk and a cheater. Condemning him puts me on the same side as all those high-horse jackass writers, who are equally big jerks but like to think of themselves as Defenders of the Game’s Moral Integrity. I always like jerks better than the personality-less “America’s Sons” like A-Rod and Ripken anyway.
Is he a cheater? One of those quotes from si.com is revealing:
“You’re talking about something that wasn’t even illegal at the time. All this stuff about supplements, protein shakes, whatever. Man, it’s not like this is the Olympics.”
Also, from this article:
“Further, the attorney stated that even if the substances Bonds took were considered steroids, they weren’t on baseball’s banned list.”
If he never took banned substances, he isn’t a cheater. HGH, for example, wasn’t banned until last year IIRC. If he continued taking them, he’s a cheater, but there’s no evidence of that.
Maybe they weren’t banned by baseball, but if the allegations are true, Bonds was taking vast quantities of Schedule III controlled substances, which is a violation of federal law without a prescription. To say that’s not cheating is ridiculous. He was breaking the law. Maybe not the law of baseball, but the law of the United States. If you are breaking a law to play a game, you are cheating at that game. I just don’t understand the “It wasn’t banned by baseball at the time argument” that all the commentators are putting out there. IT WAS ILLEGAL AND WRONG. Those are my two qualifications for cheating.
Not attacking you personally, Joey, and I don’t mean to call you “ridiculous,” but I’m frustrated by this argument. I guess I can see the other side, but it’s based on a morally ambiguous technicality, IMO.
Now if I can just get down off this high horse without breaking my neck…
Amen, Jenny….you beat me to it…I had ready to paste:
“You’re talking about something that wasn’t even illegal at the time. All this stuff about supplements, protein shakes, whatever. Man, it’s not like this is the Olympics.”
It certainly was illegal; just, as you pointed out, not banned by baseball. I’m sure sticking a knife isn’t banned by baseball either, but I think it’s illegal. I hope Barry knows that one! Did you guys click the article link earlier about Bonds saying he wants to tarnish all of baseball’s records? Hank Aaron is STILL defending Bonds (or at least not criticizing him, so good for Hank), but geez….Bonds doesn’t deserve the record! Aaron got the record honest, and he went through Hell to get it.
I hope Bonds retires and spares the baseball world the mess he’ll create for years to come if he breaks Aaron’s record.
You do know that earlier link is just a joke from the satirical news site the Onion, right? The last line is priceless:
Bonds added, however, that he would trade in all of those records for just one personal world championship that he didn’t have to share with any teammates or organization.
Javy is playing at first base for PR instead of Delgado. Is Delgado hurt?
second bass: “Aaron got the record honest, . . .”
How are you so sure Hammerin’ Hank never ever popped a greenie? Those things were all over the place. They’ve only been illegal since 1970, though, so I guess it’s only dishonest if he took them before then.
I’ll take a stab at that one. Hank Aaron probably DID do greenies. And no, if he did them before 1970, I don’t believe that was dishonest. There is a lot of meaning behind our laws. If something becomes illegal, it indicates that there is a consensus on a good reason you shouldn’t do/use it. At that point, the line between right and wrong is defined. Before that point, I think you can legitimately argue that you didn’t know it was a bad thing to do, or that it is questionable whether a thing is bad or not. That excuse goes away once it becomes illegal and you can no longer claim ignorance or ambiguity.
If Hank did them AFTER they became illegal, then yes, that was dishonest and cheating. But I don’t think we really have any way to go back 30 years and deal with that. We CAN deal with the present, however, and we need to. You have to start somewhere.
jenny, I think you said it perfectly.
Delgado has some elbow tendinitis, so he was 50/50 to play today for Puerto Rico (he didn’t play in their warmup game against the Mets on Sunday). If he feels better, I suspect he’ll be out there for the game against Cuba on Friday.
Delgado had the same ailment last March, so don’t get your hopes up that he’s not going to crush for the Mets this year.
Alright, that argument is ridiculous. You’re basically equating moral standards to our legal system, and then you’re saying they should be baseball’s moral standards as well. So, if you go by that logic, that mean that if murder is not illegal today, then I can go murder someone. But if murder becomes illegal tomorrow, I have to stop murdering people. Should we place our moral standards on what the United States law says is illegal? If you think that, you’re going to piss off a lot of conservatives who think that marijuana and homosexuality is wrong even though it’s legal in some states.
Sorry to get political, but I swear it started on a philosophical base.
No, I had a line in there to the effect of “obviously not stuff like murder or robbery,” but it appears I left it out when I was revising the post. It was hard to put that into words without getting overly subjective and opening a lot of doors to pigeon-holing, so I just left that discussion out entirely. But I do NOT equate morality with legality.
Here’s a way to put it: Not everything that is legal is moral. But most everything that is illegal is immoral, because breaking the law is, IMO, inherently immoral, unless the law is unjust. And I challenge someone to prove that controlling anabolic steroids is unjust.
Is that better, Rob? You don’t need to jump on me…
Alright, I wasn’t jumping on you, Jenny. I said your argument was ridiculous, not you. I normally agree with you; not this time.
Your reponse still doesn’t solve anything. I’m trying to get this straight, though. Before greenies were illegal, they were ok from a moral standpoint. Before they were banned by baseball, they were ok from a moral standpoint. But when the law deemed that greenies were illegal, that’s when they became morally reprehensible. Now let’s equate it to a more modern situation. Last year, military recruiters were allowed to go into non-government funded schools. Now they can’t. So going by your logic, from a moral standpoint it was ok a year ago, but not now. Six years ago, if I wanted to take a box cutter onto an airplane, I could take a box cutter onto an airplane. Now, however, I can’t. So, let me guess: it was ok then, morally, but not ok now?
The argument seems a little bit too post-modern and relative. In the end, Bonds and Aaron were wrong if he took them before or after their substances were illegal. There’s no subjectivity to it.
I didn’t know we were necessarily discussing moral wrongs here, Rob. I thought this was an argument over the definition of “cheating.” In my opinion, before baseball or any national legislation recognized greenies as illegal, it was not cheating to use them. Morally wrong perhaps, but I wouldn’t categorize it as “cheating.”
subject: Hank Aaron and greenies
In his autobiography, “I Had a Hammer” Hank admits to taking a greenie once. He went on to say it was a huge mistake and he hated the way it made him feel. He believed it actually hindered more than helped his performance (obviously not a direct quote. it’s a long book and i don’t have time to look). He even names the player who gave it to him.
I don’t know, but Hank seems like a guy who tells it how it is, no matter how unpopular it might be.
Anyways, Second Bass, I don’t know that I’d say that Hank is defending Bonds. I remember Hank saying he wouldn’t be present to watch Barry break his record. I think that says a lot.
Let’s be fair here, Rob. In the 1950s, the general public didn’t know cigarettes were bad for them. Although cigarettes have never been made illegal (I wish they would be), it became stupid and, at least from my perspective, immoral to start smoking after the facts were made known. By smoking, people were irresponsibly endangering their health and the health of others in the face of reason.
How do you know the same wasn’t the case for greenies? People didn’t know a lot of things before. They didn’t know you should use a seat belt in a car, or that shooting heroin causes brain damage. When it became known that greenies were bad for you, they were made illegal. Before that, isn’t it fair to say people, including Hank Aaron et al, might not have known? I don’t see what’s immoral about that. Doing something when you know it’s harmful and wrong is immoral, IMO. This is generally embodied in our laws, which is what I was trying to say when talking about legality. Sometimes it’s not, which is when judgment has to take over. But the reason we have a lot of our laws is that people came to an agreement that preventing certain actions was good . Before this decision was reached and the general public informed through the promulgation of the law, I think it’s perfectly reasonable to assume that people didn’t know better. I don’t know how they can be condemned for this.
As for your box cutter example, I believe that in general, the act of breaking a law is immoral, because breaking that law undermines the authority of society that’s necessary to prevent chaos. It’s not so much the actual bringing of box cutters on a plane that I see as immoral, but the symbolism of viewing oneself as superior to others so that one doesn’t have to show any respect for authority . If there’s nothing wrong seen with breaking laws, no matter how trivial, society falls apart.
But wouldn’t you say that something that is cheating is a moral wrong? If you make moral wrongs subjective, that throws the severity of cheating out the window when you say, “Oh, well, he did it during a time where it wasn’t deemed to be cheating. So it’s ok!” Either it’s cheating or its not cheating. There’s no timeline.
Personally I’ve got an easy solution to the argument. I hate Barry. Even though he retired years before I was born, I love Hank. Therefore Barry cheated.
Sure it may not be cut & dried like that, but whoever said everything I do has to be logical?
Do you really think that the enlightenment of greenies being unfair and the subsequent ban of them was an overnight thing. Are you really going to tell me that one day it was consensus that greenies were ok, then the next day, greenies were bad and then became illegal. I’m sure you don’t think that.
So, then, let me get this straight. Player A takes greenie, steroids, etc., giving him an unfair advantage. During this time, it is all well and good. BUT!, when the MLB comes out and says that the substance Player A was taking is illegal, it doesn’t become acceptable.
That’s true of any rule change. Until the Roy Williams tackle was ruled illegal, it was a perfectly acceptable way to injure Terrell Owens.
The question here is whether breaking a law that isn’t violating a rule of baseball is still cheating. And if it is, how are people who used greenies in the 70s, 80s, 90s, etc., after they were a controlled substance but before they were baseball-illegal, any different than Barry Bonds?
there are plenty of spit ball pitchers who don’t get the credit they may or may not deserve because they were spit ball pitchers, BEFORE it was banned.
The idea that “oh but it wasn’t banned by baseball” is ridiculous. We can ignore all the legal/philisophical/moral/religous implications and look at the lengths that bonds went through in order to conceal he was taking steroids. Further, things are not outlawed “just because”. If you asked people back when bonds hit 73 home runs if that would be diminished if he was going to the ‘alleged’ lengths he did through the use of steroids do you think people would go “oh but baseball didn’t ban it”. Bonds KNEW what he was doing was wrong in light of the extent he went to conceal it, and the fact that at this point the PA and the Owners have actually FINALLY gotten together to deal with this issue is further proof that no matter whether it wasn specifically ‘outlawed’ by baseball or not, bonds and everyone else for that matter did wrong
Also about the ‘but so and so probabbly used greenies’ yadda yadda. Someone here said that we have to deal with whats here and know. I’m sorry whoever back 30 and 40 years aog didn’t make the effort to protect the game and we’re having to deal with it now, but it’s OUR turn now and to turn an eye from what bonds AND OTHERS have done just because it’s entertaining or ‘they are so phenominal good’ is short sighted and irresponsible. We are the keepers of the game, and we need to ensure that it’s integrity will stand for our children. Whther we were afforded that luxury or not.
Why do I feel like I always end up in deep philosophical arguments with you? 🙂
No, of course it wasn’t an overnight thing. You’re caricaturing my position. Smoking wasn’t an overnight thing. Some people still aren’t convinced. It’s reasonable to assume the same thing happened with greenies. Also, if something helps you, it’s going to be harder to convince you that it’s actually bad for you. That’s just how human nature works. Making greenies illegal forced the people that still weren’t sure about them to accept that they were indeed bad.
Of course I think cheating is morally wrong. But the definition of cheating is gaining an unfair advantage. If everyone was taking greenies, what’s unfair about that? It’s only when it became illegal and people chose to break the law and gain an unfair advantage over those who admirably weren’t willing to that it became unfair. And please don’t tell me that taking greenies is just wrong. Sure, we know that now, because we know they’re bad for you, and knowingly doing harm to yourself is immoral. But these things weren’t always known. They became known when the uninformed public was informed that greenies were illegal. Things are made illegal because they can cause harm. I’m arguing that you can’t condemn someone for just not knowing. It’s why we don’t send 6-year-olds who kill people to prison for life. They don’t know better.
Remember, we’re talking about a group of people that pees on their hands before batting…
The legal vs. illegal argument is not convincing to me. Legality is not morality, and certainly doesn’t translate to the baseball field. For example, no one is advocating that a player who takes ecstasy at a party be stripped of his records. That’s because ecstasy isn’t considered to be performance enhancing. If legal criteria were what mattered, why shouldn’t Furcal’s DUI be relevant to this discussion? It’s because driving while drunk doesn’t enhance baseball performance. On the other hand, a perfectly legal procedure like Lasik eye surgery (incidentally, one of the drugs Bonds is accused of taking is claimed to enhance vision) could dramatically increase performance.
What I’m saying is that legal vs. illegal doesn’t begin to address the real issue of performance enhancement. It actually makes things less clear, because some legal procedures like cortisone shots (which are steroidal) are perfectly accepted even though they clearly help give a player an advantage on the field.
Exactly, Jay. It’s up to baseball to define the rules of the game to make it fair. When they don’t ban greenies for 35 years, they make taking them within the rules. When they don’t ban andro or HGH, they say that using those supplements is fair. They’re fair because they’re not against the rules.
The fault is not with Barry Bonds. He was just trying to play the game to the best of his ability within the rules as defined by MLB. The problem is MLB’s unwillingness, until very recently, to create a game of baseball their audience perceives as fair. As Bonds himself said, “Man, it’s not like this is the Olympics.”
Reitsma is not having a good day in the WBC. Cormeir did okay, though.
Is that the Braves’ Cormier? Looks like a different one to me.
Poor Reits. I think this doesn’t help his closing chances.
Well, we can all agree to disagree, then. I feel like the argument got way out of the original parameters anyway, as these sorts of things are prone to do. But I decided to blow $16 and get the book, so I will see what I think then. I’m desperate for something to read that isn’t political science game theory for my terrible class.
The tape delay on ESPN Desportes is about four innings behind the action. Orr just had a horrible error at SS. Cormier’s about to come in. I’m staying up to watch it because I want to see how on earth Reitsma gives up three runs to the South Africans. I just saw Quantrill give up four, and that was only funny because he isn’t a Brave.
You’re right. I just saw the last name on the box. It’s a different Cormier.
I’m sorry to fan the flames of the fire, but it’s worth mentioning: steroids WERE ILLEGAL in Major League Baseball prior to 2004. According to an unenforced, little-known paragraph in a 1991 drug policy, entitled “Baseball’s Drug Policy and Prevention Program”: “This prohibition applies to all illegal drugs and controlled substances, including steroids.” Here’s an ESPN article about it.
So whatever Barry did, he was cheating.
Spoiler Alert
Canada put up four runs in the ninth to pull ahead and win the game. The fact that they were down after eight would be funny if Reitsma hadn’t given up three of the seven runs.
Since someone above mentioned the string of awesome NLCS battles the Braves had with the Pirates in the early ’90s, does anyone remember a catch that Otis Nixon made on a shot hit by Andy Van Slyke? My memory sucks- I was in college at the time so I was definitely drunk- but if I remember correctly, Van Slyke crushed a ball to (slightly right) center for what was going to be a game-winning home run. Again, faulty memory here, but if memory serves this was at the Launching Pad and the fence in center had to be 10′ or 12′. Otis turned around, hauled ass to the wall, jumped up, planted one spike what seemed to be 6′ off the ground, pushed off to gain WAY more altitude, and then spun in midair, and made the catch with what seemed like his entire upper body (if not more) over the top of the fence.
When he made that catch I think I passed out for a second, I was so overwhelmed. Or drunk. Either way, the only thing I am certain of about that moment is that I said to myself “I will never see a greater play in a baseball game.”
So the question is, was I totally full of shit?
AAR, I think the key point in your message is that the rule was “unenforced and little-known”. If it is such an important rule for baseball, why is it “unenforced and little-known”? It is the MLB office’s problem that they didn’t enforce their own rules. These baseball players are not the most educated people on this planet, and they are only trying to achieve their best performance within the rules of the game. If baseball didn’t communicate its rules well to the players, the fault should not be on the players.
Besides, why are we only targetting Bonds? How about McGwire, Sosa, Palmerio and possibly many more?
We can go round and round about what’s moral, what’s legal & what’s cheating. The overriding fact is that MLB DIDN’T TEST ANYONE & THERE WAS NO PENALTY FOR USING STEROIDS.
What else do you need to know?
This is MLB’s fault and ultimately Barry Bonds’ burden. I’m not going to say one is more to blame than the other, but they both bear responsibility for this disgraceful mess.
And Rufino, that’s pretty much right. No matter how loopy you were, you are (so to speak) in the ballpark. I still have that game on tape & it’s one of the great chillbump moments you’ll ever see. It basically saved a 1-0 win that extended a winning streak to 13 games. (Also, Chip’s call was unbelievable.)
Salty is starting to take ground ball at first base, this should be marked as the beginning of a process to slot Salty into first base for the next season. To be honest, if Javy can play first base, there is no reason why Salty can’t.
Excellent debate. Just wanted to interject that the banning of greenies by MLB coincided with the publication of Ball Four, which exposed their widespread use in MLB. This leads me to believe that the banning was not the result of a sudden realization that doing greenies was wrong, but rather a reaction to the embarrassing realization that so many players were doing something that everyone already knew was wrong.
ububba, I was at that game and have never heard the call . . . you don’t happen to know of anyplace I could download it, do you?
Rufi, I remember that catch. My father still calls that the greatest catch he’s ever seen. I disagree; my favorite catch is one that Andruw made on a liner given up by Glavine. Druw wasn’t even in the picture until the very end, coming from out of nowhere to save a double. But your memory is pretty much right on.
I think you have to take timing and context into consideration, though, Kyle. That Nixon catch was late in a huge game. I remember the ‘Druw catch, and it was amazing, but I don’t think it had the meaning that Nixon’s did/does. For example, that Willie Mays catch on the Wertz ball wouldn’t be nearly as big a deal if not for the context.
It seesm to me that committing a felony (using controlled substances without a prescription) to enhance your performance is a no-no regardless of whether it violates baseball rules. Just because it wasn’t specifically banned by baseball-largely because nobody thought to make it illegal since it was already a crime–doesn’t give Bonds carte blanche to use it. Obviously, laws do not always reflect moral values–eg, at one time, it was a crime for a black person to sit in the front of the bus in the South. But context is important–you might commit a felony by taking an illegal substance if you have terminal cancer. But, from a moral standpoint, that seems clearly different than committing a felony to hit more home runs. It doesn’t make sense to me to say that it was ok for Bonds to flaunt a federal law simply because the substance was not specifically banned under baseball rules.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean he was cheating in the sense of getting an unfair competitive advantage. Taking steroids–at least for baseball–isn’t the same, it seems to me, as something like blood doping (which a lot of Eastern European countries did during the Cold War) that actually changes the way the body reacts physiologically. There was no other way to achieve that effect other than chemically. On the other hand, it’s always possible (albeit more difficult and time consuming) to increase your strength though legal training methods. So, Bonds and McGwire didn’t really have an “unfair advantage”–it was simply the way they got it that was unfair. Moreover, it’s a real question as to how much steroids actually enhance hitting performance in baseball. The advantage is probably somewhat indirect. If you took a chemical, for example, that somehow physiologically enhanced your hand-eye coordination, that would truly be obtaining an unfair advantage that would directly affect performance. Then the question becomes how much of Bonds and McGwire’s home runs can you attribute to steroids and I think that’s an impossible question to answer, but certainly not all of them.
Yeah, context matters. I think in the great scheme of things, the Nixon catch was way more significant and more memorable to Braves fans in general. But when Nixon was going back on the ball I remember thinking “that’s probably gone, but he has a chance” whereas I never saw Andruw coming; in taking me completely by surprise, that play became my favorite.
Don’t take that the wrong way, though – I understand why others disagree. The Nixon catch (‘the catch’ as it’s called in a Turner field memorial) was amazing.
The Nixon catch kept the long winning streak alive… 13 I think so it had that weighing in on it. I’ll never forget the look on Van Slyke’s face as he was near second base… ouch!
mhr,
I’m sure if you do some Googling you can find it.
I have it on an old VHS tape. Luckily, I happened to be taping the game. It was a Friday or Saturday night game & I watched it when I returned home from wherever I was.
I also seem to remember TBS ran a quick 25th anniversary package of highlights a few years ago before a game and the Nixon catch & call (“He caught the ball! He caught the ball! I don’t believe it!”) was in there.
“Nixon goes as far as he can gooooo… ….. HE CAUGHT THE BALL! HE CAUGHT THE BALL! I CAN’T BELIEVE IT!”
I used to have that video clip saved on my computer. That catch was totally incredible, and still the second best catch I’ve ever seen. The first is that unreal, tails-turned catch that Andruw made jumping feet first into the centerfield wall. Anyone remember that one?
A second of the Nixon catch was on the video graphic intro thing TBS used before games in the mid 90s
Anyone remember the time john rocker got hit by batteries at shea? that was great !!!