If it feels like cheating, it probably is.

And no, I didn’t get that from SportsCenter. I don’t watch ESPN.

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So whatever Jim Caple, or Kirk Radomski or Paul or Sarah or WHOEVER has to say about this whole HGH circus there is one undisputable fact that will come to fruition in the near future. BARRY BONDS IS GOING TO BE THE HOMERUN KING.

He’s seeing the ball well right now and if people will pitch to him, it could be 3 weeks to a month… So get your explanations and challenges to his reign as King ready cause you’ve only got a few weeks.

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But there is one point that’s continually getting glossed over here. The drug testing isn’t really catching anyone anymore. You can’t continue to overlook that Bonds admitted to using the cream and the clear in front of a grand jury. This is indisputable. And yet, Bonds has never tested positive for anything aside from amphetamines as far as we know of. Jason Giambi admitted to using several kinds of steroids in front of the same grand jury. And yet, Giambi has never tested positive for anything as far as we know of. Jason Grimsley admitted to using steroids to the Feds. Again, Grimsley did not test positive since the drug testing began in 2005. He was banned 50 games but not for failing a drug test. He was banned because the Feds raided his home and found the substances. It wasn’t a positive test. We THINK he failed one in 2003, but MLB claims that the tests back then were anonymous so Grimsley himself had no way of knowing. Who’s lying? Can’t say for certain, but someone is.

It’s unfortunate that Bonds can’t cite his negative drug tests as inconclusive proof that he’s clean. I want to believe that the sport is clean. I want to believe that the drug testing works. But how can I possibly believe that when Bonds, Giambi and Grimsley all admitted to taking performance enhancers and yet weren’t caught by the test itself?

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We make no attempt to single out Barry Bonds. Barry just happens to be carrying the steroid banner presently. McGwire, Sosa, Bud Selig etc… all of them may be guilty of drinking from the steroid trough. We do indeed protest the steroid era… and the efforts of Bud Selig. Like a good parent… we do not accept the “everybody does it” excuse… the integrity of the game is at stake. We know the asterisk will never be applied but at least we fans will have said to the future fans … we knew what was going on and we did not stand by and ignore it.

Our asterisk is simply an acknowledgment that we the fans were not ignorant to the truth. Future baseball fans will certainly look back on this time… the steroid era… and they will wonder why no one took a stand and called foul. So this year, we stand up for the past, to show the future, that the now matters. And we will make our stand… in the stands… at the ballpark… for all to see. Our little piece of foam does not attempt to change the record book or right a wrong. That would certainly be beyond our ability and would only add to an already convoluted tangle of words and facts. This little foam asterisk simply allows the fans to demonstrate, in a peaceful simple way, that we were not blind. We were not fooled. And we did not stand by and look the other way while the integrity of the game was ground into the dirt.

The Fans

http://www.fanslovebaseball.com/

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“Rockstars don’t go to jail… Vince Neil only did thirty days and he killed somebody…) See “Airheads” for the context. But it’s true. Lying to a grand jury gets him house arrest. maybe. He’s still gonna be the homerun king until A Rod or Pujols or someone else passes him in a few years just like he did McGwire with the single season record. It’s all a big jerk off for sportswriters but for people who truly know the game it’s a travesty to the sport that we love. Ask any good player who the best hitter of all time is, and the names you will get in no particular order are Bonds, Williams, Mays and Ruth. Kind’ve unfair to dismiss one of the best hitters of all time because of specualtion and allegations…

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But the fact remains that Bonds DID ADMIT to taking the cream and the clear. And yet we still don’t know if Bonds ever failed a drug test prior to the 2005 season. And no, I don’t think that the homerun record should be nullified as a result because he certainly wasn’t the only one to use performance enhancers. But few are getting caught.

There were 28 players in the bigs and in the farm who were suspended for steroids in 2005. That number dropped to six in 2006. None so far in 2007. Have people stopped using them altogether? Unlikely. Has the drug testing already fallen behind the science of performance enhancers? Highly possible.

I don’t think that sports – not just baseball – will ever be clean. Never has, never will. Bonds is going to break the record. Doesn’t bother me either way. He was a Hall of Fame player before San Francisco, and he still is. It won’t change my opinion of Bonds and it won’t make me any less of a baseball fan.

What does bother me is cases like Ken Caminiti – it’s true that he died of a drug overdose. What’s also true is that a contributing factor in his death was an enlarged heart, created by hypertrophy which is one of the potential side effects of anabolic steroids, which Caminiti had admitted to using. Caminiti was one of the guys I grew up watching. I’d hate to see anyone else ending up like him.

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A truly great man. Just like Babe Ruth was a great teetotaler and Ty Cobb was a great multiculturalist.

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Barry Bonds is not going to jail. HUNDREDS of people have strenuously tried to tarnish Bonds’ reputation for years, and they’ve all come up empty. Selig and the feds have absolutely nothing on Bonds and they never have. They’re living on a wing and a prayer hoping that SOMETHING, even isolated former bat boys, turn up so that they can try to uncover a scoop on Bonds. It hasn’t happened nor will it – no one would have been able to sit on that kind of info for the past 6-8 years.

However, I’m not naive, either. Bonds, like 50-60% of 1990’s ballplayers (just my opinion, obviously not fact) has probably taken something at one point in his career. Just his sheer body “reformation” would suggest so. Regardless, Bonds is still proving today that he has the eye of a tiger and can crush the ball at will. He has always been one of the best ballplayers of my generation, if not in the history of the game. He is feared at the plate. Literally.

I personally am rooting for him to break the record.

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