My opinion? Well it's that I have no opinion
I like baseball. I find the game fascinating. I love all that goes on in a game, the way a pitchers works on a hitter, how all the fielders step to their toes moments before a pitch, the anticipation when a speedy runner is one the basepaths and you know it's only a matter of time before he tries to take off and steal a base. I love and loathe the fact that there is so much importance placed on numbers in the game. I love the fact that there are some achievements that are so grand that numbers strike you with awe and I loathe the fact that so many people try to justify things through numbers all the time when numbers don't always tell the story.
Well there's a bitg number on the horizon for baseball and everyone is talking about it, so I figured what the hell, I'll talk about it too. The number everyone seems to be talking about (aside from $28 million for Roger Clemens....trust me I'll be talking about that soon) is 756, which in case you didn't know is one more than 755 which is the number of home runs that Hank Aaron hit in his career. That number represents the all-time career home run mark and to hear some people speak about it, it's possibly the holiest number since Moses stood on a mountain top with a couple a stone slabs.
Barry Bonds is very close to breaking that number. Through the 33 games in which he has played, encompassing 88 at bats Bonds has hit 11 homers. That's one every eight at bats. Quite simply that's a ridiculous pace. If he were to get around 450 at bats, that would be around 56 homers for the season. That would be Bonds' second highest total of his career, behind the single season record of 73 he hit in 2001. So while not quite as gaudy, it would still be impressive.
So the odds of Bonds breaking this record and soon seems pretty reasonable. Records were made to be broken, we should celebrate new standardss, blah blah blah. The issue with this whole thing is the steroids/performance enhancing drugs that Bonds most likely took.
Bonds has most likely taken performance enhancing drugs that have most likely benefitted and enhnaced his career. If you don't believe me just do a google search about Bonds and the issue. There is a mountain of circumstantial evidence that would make Everest look like a mole hill. Or do an image search from Bonds early in his career and compare it to a picture now. His head has gone from the size of a raisin to a watermelon. His arms and legs were about as big as those of Mr. Fantastic when he stretches his limbs and now he makes the Hulk look like and 85lbs. weakling. OK, so he took some things that made him balloon out muscle, everyone can agree on that.
But here's what people can't agree on, whether or not they should be happy that Bonds is breaking the record. Virtually everyone outside of San Francisco doesn't want Bonds to break it and nearly everyone in the city does. You can't escape the topic. It's on ESPN, it's on sports talk radio, it's even on the news. Everyone is telling us what to think, why to care, what side of the aisle we should be taking. We're being told this an issue with no gray area to which I say, lord no there's a gray area.
The thinking is that you are either happy and in favor of the record being broken or you're sad/angry/disappointed that the record is being broken. Well, if you're like me then this your opinion, you don't have one.
That's right, I don't have any real opinion on the matter. Well, OK maybe I have an opionion and that view point would be that I simply don't care.
Yup, for as much as I love baseball I don't care and maybe you shouldn't care either. I'm not saying I'll be turning a blind eye to all this stuff. Hell, if I'm watching TV and the station cuts to show Bonds' at bats as he gets close to the record I'll watch. And if he hits the one that breaks it I'll nod my head and go about my day. I'm not going to get worked up into a fervor one way or the other. I didn't say it wasn't interesting, hence why I'll watch, but I really won't care.
There are many reasons why I don't care so I won't run through all of them, just a few of them, or most of them. I don't care primarily because this is being treated as some holy pious matter. It's sports, pure and simple. I love sports a great deal, but I also realize there are a far many things that are much more important. To hear some of the sports pundits talk about it Bonds is committing a high crime against humanity. He's cheated all of us and he's cheated this wonderful game that we hold dear. He's despicable, a detriment to society a menace. And you know what, most of those may be true, but I still don't care.
Bonds is dirty, there's no question. He's also an egomanical jackass. And you know what, I still don't care. I don't like having moral life lessons being stuffed down my throat, by sportswriters no less. Where are the cries for ethics from them when the drum up non-controversies or twist and mis-construe quotes? I'm sorry, but I can't handle being told what's moral by a body of people who in large part deal in shady ethics on a daily basis. Also by a body of people who blast a man for his massive ego and over valued sense of self worth and when a great many of them have massive egos and over valued senses of self worth.
Another reason I don't care is because we're in an era of baseball where everything is pretty much tainted. Steroids and whatever else everyone is taking will be hanging over the game for a long time. And while Bonds sure is dirty and thus are his home runs, what about all the pitchers who have been on the juice. If Bonds has homered off of pitchers who were juiced up, does that constitute some kind of double negative and make those homers clean? Sure Bonds was dirty, but so were a lot of others and while it's easy to throw Bonds under bus, it doesn't make it right.
Plus, what kind of hypocrisy is it we can give an award to a guy who was on the juice and basically won the reward as a result of his past transgressions. Confused? OK I'll put it simply. Jason Giambi won the Comeback Player of the Year Award in 2005. Giambi hit .271 that season wtih 32 home runs and 87 RBI. Impressive for a guy who in the previous had played in only 80 games and hit .208 with 12 homers (and yet he was still an All-Star). On the surface, seems legit. Well lets get past the surface here. Giambi missed most the year with a host of mystery ailments, one of which was later revealed to be a benign tumor on his pituitary gland, a side effect of steroid use. Giambi was also noticeably less hulking when the year began and eventually held a press conference (I can't quite remember if it was at the end of the 04 season or the beginning of the 05) where he apologized to his teammates and to fans and to the Yankees organization, but no one ever knew for what because he never told us what he was apologizing for. Safe bet it was most likely in regards to his steroid use.
Anyway, so Giambi was on the juice too. Too his credit, he got off the juice or at least it so appears. Well the juice withdrawl seemed to be the cause of his bad 2004 campaign, so does anyone else see a problem with he being given an award from Major League Baseball celebrating his comeback from a self induced injury, particularly one that most likely came from performance enhancing drugs? I would hope so, but it seems that no one has done so yet and that is sad. I really can't care about something (Bonds stuff) when it seems that nobody else cares about something (the Giambi thing) that at least has some correlation to the current issue. I don't get how major league baseball and sportwriters can say they care about this issue, when they overlook somewhat major things that relate to.
I could go on, but it's late and I need to go to bed. So I'll leave you with this. If for some reason you care about all of this stop. It'll make you're life a lot easier, less stress you don't need to have. Bonds will hit a home run, people will scream with outrage, cry foul, weep in sadness, water will turn to blood, locusts will block out the sun, the four horsemen will ride and then the sun will rise again. This isn't some holy event, it's not going to change the world. Just let it happen, I promise it won't hurt. Trust me apathy is the way to go on this one, it reall is. But that's enough from me because it doesn't really bother me that you care one way or the other, quite simply because I don't care.
Well there's a bitg number on the horizon for baseball and everyone is talking about it, so I figured what the hell, I'll talk about it too. The number everyone seems to be talking about (aside from $28 million for Roger Clemens....trust me I'll be talking about that soon) is 756, which in case you didn't know is one more than 755 which is the number of home runs that Hank Aaron hit in his career. That number represents the all-time career home run mark and to hear some people speak about it, it's possibly the holiest number since Moses stood on a mountain top with a couple a stone slabs.
Barry Bonds is very close to breaking that number. Through the 33 games in which he has played, encompassing 88 at bats Bonds has hit 11 homers. That's one every eight at bats. Quite simply that's a ridiculous pace. If he were to get around 450 at bats, that would be around 56 homers for the season. That would be Bonds' second highest total of his career, behind the single season record of 73 he hit in 2001. So while not quite as gaudy, it would still be impressive.
So the odds of Bonds breaking this record and soon seems pretty reasonable. Records were made to be broken, we should celebrate new standardss, blah blah blah. The issue with this whole thing is the steroids/performance enhancing drugs that Bonds most likely took.
Bonds has most likely taken performance enhancing drugs that have most likely benefitted and enhnaced his career. If you don't believe me just do a google search about Bonds and the issue. There is a mountain of circumstantial evidence that would make Everest look like a mole hill. Or do an image search from Bonds early in his career and compare it to a picture now. His head has gone from the size of a raisin to a watermelon. His arms and legs were about as big as those of Mr. Fantastic when he stretches his limbs and now he makes the Hulk look like and 85lbs. weakling. OK, so he took some things that made him balloon out muscle, everyone can agree on that.
But here's what people can't agree on, whether or not they should be happy that Bonds is breaking the record. Virtually everyone outside of San Francisco doesn't want Bonds to break it and nearly everyone in the city does. You can't escape the topic. It's on ESPN, it's on sports talk radio, it's even on the news. Everyone is telling us what to think, why to care, what side of the aisle we should be taking. We're being told this an issue with no gray area to which I say, lord no there's a gray area.
The thinking is that you are either happy and in favor of the record being broken or you're sad/angry/disappointed that the record is being broken. Well, if you're like me then this your opinion, you don't have one.
That's right, I don't have any real opinion on the matter. Well, OK maybe I have an opionion and that view point would be that I simply don't care.
Yup, for as much as I love baseball I don't care and maybe you shouldn't care either. I'm not saying I'll be turning a blind eye to all this stuff. Hell, if I'm watching TV and the station cuts to show Bonds' at bats as he gets close to the record I'll watch. And if he hits the one that breaks it I'll nod my head and go about my day. I'm not going to get worked up into a fervor one way or the other. I didn't say it wasn't interesting, hence why I'll watch, but I really won't care.
There are many reasons why I don't care so I won't run through all of them, just a few of them, or most of them. I don't care primarily because this is being treated as some holy pious matter. It's sports, pure and simple. I love sports a great deal, but I also realize there are a far many things that are much more important. To hear some of the sports pundits talk about it Bonds is committing a high crime against humanity. He's cheated all of us and he's cheated this wonderful game that we hold dear. He's despicable, a detriment to society a menace. And you know what, most of those may be true, but I still don't care.
Bonds is dirty, there's no question. He's also an egomanical jackass. And you know what, I still don't care. I don't like having moral life lessons being stuffed down my throat, by sportswriters no less. Where are the cries for ethics from them when the drum up non-controversies or twist and mis-construe quotes? I'm sorry, but I can't handle being told what's moral by a body of people who in large part deal in shady ethics on a daily basis. Also by a body of people who blast a man for his massive ego and over valued sense of self worth and when a great many of them have massive egos and over valued senses of self worth.
Another reason I don't care is because we're in an era of baseball where everything is pretty much tainted. Steroids and whatever else everyone is taking will be hanging over the game for a long time. And while Bonds sure is dirty and thus are his home runs, what about all the pitchers who have been on the juice. If Bonds has homered off of pitchers who were juiced up, does that constitute some kind of double negative and make those homers clean? Sure Bonds was dirty, but so were a lot of others and while it's easy to throw Bonds under bus, it doesn't make it right.
Plus, what kind of hypocrisy is it we can give an award to a guy who was on the juice and basically won the reward as a result of his past transgressions. Confused? OK I'll put it simply. Jason Giambi won the Comeback Player of the Year Award in 2005. Giambi hit .271 that season wtih 32 home runs and 87 RBI. Impressive for a guy who in the previous had played in only 80 games and hit .208 with 12 homers (and yet he was still an All-Star). On the surface, seems legit. Well lets get past the surface here. Giambi missed most the year with a host of mystery ailments, one of which was later revealed to be a benign tumor on his pituitary gland, a side effect of steroid use. Giambi was also noticeably less hulking when the year began and eventually held a press conference (I can't quite remember if it was at the end of the 04 season or the beginning of the 05) where he apologized to his teammates and to fans and to the Yankees organization, but no one ever knew for what because he never told us what he was apologizing for. Safe bet it was most likely in regards to his steroid use.
Anyway, so Giambi was on the juice too. Too his credit, he got off the juice or at least it so appears. Well the juice withdrawl seemed to be the cause of his bad 2004 campaign, so does anyone else see a problem with he being given an award from Major League Baseball celebrating his comeback from a self induced injury, particularly one that most likely came from performance enhancing drugs? I would hope so, but it seems that no one has done so yet and that is sad. I really can't care about something (Bonds stuff) when it seems that nobody else cares about something (the Giambi thing) that at least has some correlation to the current issue. I don't get how major league baseball and sportwriters can say they care about this issue, when they overlook somewhat major things that relate to.
I could go on, but it's late and I need to go to bed. So I'll leave you with this. If for some reason you care about all of this stop. It'll make you're life a lot easier, less stress you don't need to have. Bonds will hit a home run, people will scream with outrage, cry foul, weep in sadness, water will turn to blood, locusts will block out the sun, the four horsemen will ride and then the sun will rise again. This isn't some holy event, it's not going to change the world. Just let it happen, I promise it won't hurt. Trust me apathy is the way to go on this one, it reall is. But that's enough from me because it doesn't really bother me that you care one way or the other, quite simply because I don't care.
posted by MC at 9:04 PM
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