Line of the story in my opinion: "The most likely reason that athletes use HGH, though, is superstition. A ballplayer might shoot up with HGH for the same reason we take vitamin C when we have a cold: There's no good reason to think it does anything, but we're willing to give it a try." How long before we outlaw performance enhancing superstition? Would Wade Boggs have been banned for his pre-game ritual of marathon fried chicken eating? And please recognize this for all of its facetiousness. I don't know many pro athletes over the age of 60 I've got one .. Jose Mesa. He's got to be 60 right?
Drood: Cheaters are scum. Bonds is scum. End of story.
How is he a cheater? Any of the drugs he's known to have done were not against MLB rules when he did them- which incidentally is the same case with Mark McGwire, but stupidity and inattention to detail has long been the stock and trade of sportswriters and sports fans alike. They were illegal without a prescription, but that's not the same as "heroin"- more like Vicodin.
"Lastly, while the verdict is still out on Bonds (I have yet to see a guilty conviction).....but I think it's disingenuous to target just Bonds at every moment" I'm one that agrees with you. That's because this whole "steriod scandal" was started with 'leaked testimony' that was never supposed to reach the publics ears. It's a shame that because of who Barry Bonds is, this whole "scandal" has brought nothing but a 'witch hunt' upon Bonds. People can and will say what they want but the bottom line is, Barry Bonds and the media have never really seen eye to eye. Now that this story was 'leaked', every one of those media outlets that Bonds have crossed paths with (not in a good way) are now salivating like a pack of hungry wolves.
I completely agree. "Sports journalists" is an oxymoron. They're pure yellow journalists, personalizing their own feelings about a player or team, and adjusting their coverage and even their "facts" because of it. Bonds has never been found guilty, has never been found to use an MLB-banned substance, and has never been found to be using an illegal drug not on the MLB-banned list (
because if it can be proven that he took some of the non-banned drugs like "the Cream", it'd also have to be without a prescription to be illegal). Yet "journalists" continue to rehash the "Bonds == Guilty" line without evidence simply because they dislike the guy. Stupidity abounds, and you end up with a witch hunt: everyone thinks he's guilty, everyone believes his Hall credentials are remotely debatable, because he didn't kiss enough tubby sports-writer ass in his early career. Most sports fans are cowards and intellectual lightweights. Actually, most
people are that way, it's just exacerbated in sports.
So all people covering sports are useless, they all attack Barry Bonds out of personal animosity and the majority of sports fans are spineless idiots. I think all those logical fallacies chained together make for a compelling argument, but I'm a sports fan so take that with a grain of salt.
If you want to add yourself to the list of "cowards and intellectual lightweights" when talking about sports fans, by all means, go for broke. I, on the other hand tend to look at things without being baised, or at least I try. It just bothers me for people to automatically put the guilty stamp on Bonds because he put on some muscle mass. So what if he got jacked up? Maybe he put in long ass hours at the gym, do you really know? I sure as hell don't and unless there is absolute evidence pointing at Barry Bonds using anything illegal according to MLB, he's just as clean as future Hall of Famer, Roger Clemens. I'm not suggesting that all sports journalist are out to get Bonds but as much of a fact that these very same sports journalist are the ones that get to vote an athlete in the Hall of Fame and sometimes just don't even bother to vote for a guy simply because they don't want to, I just wouldn't put it past them.
"An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition." You're arguing a straw man and I can't help you. I may disagree with Hal, but at least we can discuss various points. You seem to be surrounding some nebulous proposition that no one is really debating.
Why make it seem as if it's unheard of for some people to have a hidden agenda who use their position of power in any way to make sure another individual doesn't succeed? It does in fact happen in all walks of life, not just in sports. How could you think that no one is debating whether or not Barry Bond used steriods or not, just because your not involved? It has been pretty much covered by media outlets for the past few years and the topic was raised in this very thread earlier by someone else, not sure if you read that or not.
Why make it seem as if it's unheard of for some people to have a hidden agenda who use their position of power in any way to make sure another individual doesn't succeed? And that, my friend, is a straw man.
It just bothers me for people to automatically put the guilty stamp on Bonds because he put on some muscle mass. We've covered this many times before, so I'm not going to debate it again, but you're completely mischaracterizing the reasons many people believe bonds to be guilty. I've read everything I can find, looked at it from every angly, and for many reasons believe without doubt that bonds' is guilty. I find it far more difficult to believe that he's innocent. I came to that conclusion through reason and logic. That's my opinion. I don't need proof. People can disagree with me, and I'm fine with that, but when you're basing his innocence on no formal proof and paranoia (everyone's out to get him) I fail to see how you can call others intellectual lightweights.
I fail to see how you can call others intellectual lightweights I didn't call anyone intellectual lightweights, this is what I did say: "If you want to add yourself to the list of "cowards and intellectual lightweights" when talking about sports fans, by all means, go for broke." I was being sarcastic. If you were to look at the post made by Hal, he mentioned that, "Most sports fans are cowards and intellectual lightweights", so that's where that came from. If you want to make Bonds guilty over your"assumptions", your more than welcomed to do so. I just refuse to do so based on what other people are saying. Pete Rose was found guilty of betting on baseball and banned from the sport because of burden of proof, not because he admitted to it, because we know that he only recently admitted to doing so, but because there were betting slips with Rose's handwriting all over them. These are two different topics but the situation is very similar. When this first happened with Pete Rose, there were many people that thought he was guilty but then there were others that didn't think he did it. Of course he lied but still, there were people on both sides of the fence for all the years. The same can be said about Bonds, maybe he's lying and maybe he's not but if he's guilty, he should be dealt with the same as any other cheater. But what if he's not? What then? There will still be people on the fence until the truth comes out. Until then, we can continue to give our opinions on this subject but I simply rather enjoy watching the game.
