Barry Bonds (Juiced Merge)

[BuckBackHome]

Originally Posted by NJ-Buckeye

FOX interviewed Tom Verducci, lead baseball writer for SI

man was he bold and blunt.. pulled no punches... VERY IMPRESSIVE

So, what did he say?

[OSUBasketballJunkie]

Dispatch

3/8/06

Baker maintains he didn’t know if Bonds used steroids

Wednesday, March 08, 2006

Paul Sullivan
CHICAGO TRIBUNE

<!--PHOTOS--><TABLE class=phototableright align=right border=0><!-- begin large ad code --><TBODY><TR><TD><TABLE align=center><TBODY></TBODY></TABLE></TD></TR></TBODY></TABLE>


MESA, Ariz. — Chicago Cubs manager Dusty Baker reiterated yesterday he did not know whether Barry Bonds was using steroids when Baker managed the slugger in San Francisco.

Baker’s name appears in the book Game of Shadows, a detailed report on Bonds’ alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs.

Excerpts in Sports Illustrated portray Baker as a manager who watched Bonds’ body go through massive change but never questioned why. The book says: "The Giants, from owner Peter Magowan to manager Dusty Baker, had no interest in learning whether Bonds was using steroids."

Asked if he would have said something to Bonds had he known Bonds was using steroids, Baker replied, "Had I known, definitely I would’ve said something. But I didn’t know. Everybody was speculating about a lot of people."

Baker repeated he "never" saw Bonds use steroids.

"Everybody saw the physical change," Baker said. "You didn’t know if Barry was (just) lifting weights, because he lifts all the time. (The book) says I wasn’t interested, but what are you going to do? I’m not a detective. What are you going to do as a manager?

"How can anybody assert I wasn’t interested?"

Baker added he never has condoned the use of steroids.

"I have a little boy, 6 years old," he said. "I want to protect him and all kids. Anybody will tell you, I’m one of the guys who really spoke out most about it. I didn’t know the extent. I didn’t know what was said in court.

This is the first time I’ve heard a lot of this stuff."

Baker read the magazine excerpts yesterday and said he was "lost" at times amid the detailed reports of different steroids Bonds allegedly used.

"I didn’t even know there were that many kinds of steroids," he said. "I’ve never even seen a steroid. I didn’t even know what kinds of steroids are steroids, other than the kind that you used to fight allergies. You have to be a doctor to keep up with all the stuff that was in (the excerpts)."

Baker said he has been against steroids "ever since my friend Lyle Alzado died," referring to the late NFL player, a steroid abuser.

"So it can’t be good," Baker said. "There’s no way it can be good. It’s not good for our country. It’s not good for the game. It’s not good for your system, and it’s certainly not good for these kids. I’m definitely against them."

Bonds’ alleged supplier, Greg Anderson, frequently was in the clubhouse when Baker managed the Giants. Baker said he had "no clue" about Anderson’s alleged activities and thought he was Bonds’ trainer, as Bonds had described him to management.

"He was given the OK from upstairs," Baker said, referring to Magowan.

"What are you going to do when he’s given the OK from upstairs?"

The allegations against Bonds aren’t new, and Baker has denied knowing about the abuse many times.
"What’s new is the extent of it," he said. "This is like . . . boy, it’s a bad day."

[Piney]

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald...d/14043754.htm

Posted on Wed, Mar. 08, 2006
IN MY OPINION

Steroid story a case study of situational ethics

By DAN LE BATARD

dlebatard@MiamiHerald.com

<!-- begin body-content -->We're so arbitrary with our judgments in sports. Kirk Gibson hits a famous home run doped up on cortisone, a steroid, and we cheer for the artificial courage that muted his body's screaming. Not a performance-enhancer? Well, it certainly enhanced that performance, which wouldn't have been possible without medical help.

Jim Haslett claims the 1970s Steelers were on steroids, but that doesn't seem to bother us so much. We care about baseball's sacred numbers more, and we don't like so much that polarizing Barry Bonds is chasing gentleman Hank Aaron, so we scream about the integrity of one game being contaminated while shrugging about the Steelers possibly winning four juiced championships in another.

Brett Favre being addicted to painkillers while on an unprecedented streak of consecutive starts? That's somehow a testament to his strength. Bonds being addicted to being better than everyone else? That's a testament to his weakness.

And we are outraged and dismayed that, in between the commercials for Levitra and anti-depressants, Bonds would have the audacity to bring the pharmacy to the field.

The latest ''news'' on Bonds isn't shocking, revelatory or even terribly interesting.

Discovering an athlete went looking for an edge, legal or otherwise, artificial or otherwise, is like discovering he has muscles. Seeking advantages is what athletes do for a living, whether it's the wide receiver wearing uniform pants without seams to be more aerodynamic (Rocket Ismail) or the crazed linebacker sending his feces to a lab monthly to make sure his diet is balanced (Bill Romanowski).

DIMINISHED IMAGE
But now Bonds, huge and flawed, shrinks back from immortal to mortal as that syringe takes some of the life out of his legacy. He will have to settle for being merely the best of his inflated time, not the best of all-time, merely unfathomable instead of unprecedented. Steroids giveth, and steroids taketh away.

We'll wag our finger at him and enjoy calling him ''Cheater!'' and ''Liar!'' and ''Fraud!'' -- judging athletes is the new national pastime -- but there are plenty of us who would have done the same thing in his cleats.
Let's say you are an accountant, mailman or secretary. And there are two people in your business who aren't as good as you are (Let's call them Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa) getting a lot more rewards because of some secret potion, powder or pill that isn't against the rules of your workplace.
You aren't going to go looking for that secret elixir that might make you better and add five years of money to your career? You are going to fall behind your competition by applying ethics? If so, good for you. You are a noble person. And, rather literally, a loser. You are going to be devoured for being less competitive and cruel than your cutthroat surroundings.

A STAR AT ANY SIZE
Fans have a right to be upset, even though steroids might have saved baseball while McGwire and Sosa made us forget about work stoppages with all their heavy lifting.

The record books are a mess now in our most historic sport because we don't know how many of Bonds' home runs were aided artificially or how many of the pitchers he faced were juiced, too.

Still, it bears remembering that he won three MVPs as a stick figure with Jheri curls. You could erase his past five years completely, and he would still be a Hall of Famer.

Cheater? No more so than Gaylord Perry, who spit-balled his way into the Hall of Fame. You can want all of Bonds' records erased, but then you would have to go back and maybe erase the 2003 Marlins championship, too. Maybe Pudge Rodriguez, 30 mysterious pounds heavier then, doesn't hold onto that ball after J.T. Snow crashed into him at the plate in the playoffs.

Perhaps we were a little more OK with steroids in that one instance because of how arbitrary we are with our judgments in sports.
It's OK for us to want to win at all costs.
Its just not OK for people like Barry Bonds.

[Thump]

Originally Posted by Piney

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald...d/14043754.htm

Soon as I saw the name Dan LeBatard, I quit reading.

[OH10]

Originally Posted by Thump

Soon as I saw the name Dan LeBatard, I quit reading.

My thoughts exactly. He assumes that people who are attacking Barry Bonds are willing to let it slide for other people. Couldn't be further from the truth. Give me some more evidence than Haslett, and I'll gladly rip the 70s Steelers in the same manner. McGwire gets no free pass from me. He's a cheater too.

Lebaretard needs to make assumptions in order to defend the indefensible Barry Bonds.

[7 45 33 48]

That article is coming from the same guy who said that Bonds was better then Ruth and the only reason he could come up with is that Ruth played with a bunch of slow white guys.

[Bucktastic]

March 8, 2006 -- TAMPA - Barry Bonds' shame is complete now, his disgrace permanent, his infamy eternal. Bonds officially has assumed the title of baseball's greatest scourge, a cheater and a liar whose misdeeds now bookend his misanthropy as his greatest dual, and dueling, legacies.
He cannot run away this time. He cannot summon crocodile tears and play the victim, or plant one of his children in front of the cameras to try to deflect the slings and arrows of public scorn. He cannot sneer at the devil media and stir up that scalding pot, defiantly slaughtering the messenger.
Not now. Not this time. Not anymore.
They've got the goods on Barry now.
No hiding from any of it.
Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams are the reporters who broke all those BALCO stories in the San Francisco Chronicle beginning early last year, a net into which Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield quickly became entangled. But as thick as the outrage was that attached itself to the Yankees' steroid stepchildren, they always have been guppies in the pond of performance enhancement. Bonds always was Moby Dick.

Last year, Fainaru-Wada and Williams took a sabbatical from the Chronicle to devote themselves even more completely to the greatest sports story of the new millennium. The result is "Game of Shadows," a book that will be released March 27, an excerpt of which appears in this week's Sports Illustrated, the contents of which are, in a word, staggering.
The book reveals a Bonds who jumped into the steroid septic tank with both feet after watching Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa capture America's attention in the summer of 1998 with their tag-team pursuit of Roger Maris' single-season home-run mark.
Fueled by jealousy, Bonds allegedly began ingesting junk as if he were first in line at the Sizzler buffet, a feast that included the designer steroids Cream and Clear, insulin, human growth hormone, testosterone decanoate (also known as Mexican beans), and trenbolone, a steroid that improves the muscle quality of cattle.
Bonds apparently wasn't shy about injecting, ingesting and applying ridiculous amounts of the stuff, either. Even the most devoted steroid fiends generally take a week or two off in between cycles of use; Bonds reportedly started anew whenever he felt his power begin to dip. When Greg Anderson, the man-Friday trainer who helped turn Bonds' body into a chem lab, warned him against this reckless habit, Bonds' reputed response was this: "[Bleep] off, I'll do it myself."
Bonds is no stranger to media carpet bombing, and his usual defense usually takes two tacks: I Didn't Know, and They Made It Up. The first was a sweeping insult to the intelligence of an entire nation; it wouldn't fly then and certainly will be grounded forever now. The second won't work, either, because the authors have a meticulously listed pile of sources and documents; they have him dead to rights.
Believe this: in a post-James Frey world, no book is published unless it's been lawyered to within an inch of its life.
If it's in there, it's solid. And it's murderous. The authors can't arrest him, or subpoena him, or guilt him out of baseball so he can disappear before the sacred numbers belonging to Babe Ruth and Henry Aaron do.
But they can hang him in the court of public opinion, and they have done that with an executioner's cold-blooded competence. This won't change Bonds, who has constantly shown a brazen disregard for what's right and what's wrong. If anything, it may solidify his resolve to keep going.
Still, if Bonds had any respect for decorum, for doing the right thing, he would announce his retirement immediately and vanish from sight. If he does that, perhaps those of us with Hall of Fame votes will be able to eventually delineate, in good conscience, Bonds' two careers: pre-juice, in which he hit 456 home runs and was the most complete player of his generation, and post-juice, when he became a cartoon character who helped bring the game to its knees.
Unlike Mark McGwire, whose entire legacy was supplied by a syringe, Bonds used to be a natural immortal. Go away now, we may remember that someday. Stay even one day longer, in the face of this new evidentiary mountain, and pay the piper - forever.
It's his choice. Maybe for once in his life, he can make the right one. michael.vaccaro@nypost.com

http://www.nypost.com/sports/62840.htm
<!--OAS Middle-->