On the Mitchell Report (baseball, steroids/HGH)

[barking_iguana]

Copied from elsewhere:

joerock42: I think the fans should have a week where we boycott, no watching, listening, attending games! The game is for the fans. Lets take the game back! Way to ruin our pastime. Selig for President. Yeah right!

antoniovich1" Uh, the fans didn't seem to mind when Sosa, Big Mac and Bonds were lighting up the boards with the big flies right after the end of the last strike.

In fact, the fans were the ones yelling for more. Caminiti came out early about roids. SI did an investigative piece in 1998. But no one cared than. As long as the homers flew, the turnstiles flew. And money was made by all as the fans were entertained. And baseball is entertainment at its finest.

The commish, the owners, the players union AND the fans all turned a blind eye. And now, years later, the same fans who reveled in the homer chases are same ones decring it. Well. As i said before. You can not have it both ways. Baseball gave the majority of the fans what it wanted to see. Accept it for what it was and move on. Now the outcry is here, baseball is giving the fans, once again, what it wants. Until the next time the fans cry about something.

anthony

me: Thank you Anthony. It's nice to read occasional sense in the midst of the hysteria.

I don't like watching baseball nearly as much as I used to. I used to think "I wish that was me." Now I think "Boy, I'm glad that's not me having to take risky shit in order to compete." It makes the game less fun. For me.

But the baseball world as a whole made a different decision. And to go back now and bash all the players is a level of hypocrisy that makes Rafael Palmeiro look like a saint.

Comments

[chemoelectric.livejournal.com]

The substances ought to be effectively banned regardless of what fans want, simply to keep young people from being attracted to the stuff. As for the records people set, no way should those be asterisked; they are ‘real’ records, set under the accepted conditions of the game at the time, complete with substance abuse, short fences, and so forth.

change the record books?

[magazine-elf.livejournal.com]

I work for santa_bookworm
He says he has something you can ADD to your reading list!

[tayefeth.livejournal.com]

The substances ought to be effectively banned regardless of what fans want, simply to keep young people from being attracted to the stuff.

Yes, that. The media make "heroes" of athlethic entertainers who are pressured or imagine they're pressured to take dangerous substances in order to compete, and then they blame the schools for not preventing kids from taking those same substances.

I'm not sure I'm against putting asterisks on records atained under conditions no longer acceptable. I mean, would it really hurt anyone if we applied that idea to other records? Put an asterisk by a record stock market high indicating that it was attained under levels of government subsidy no longer considered acceptable (and therefore less admirable). Put an asterisk by a scientific dicovery noting that it was made under conditions now considered extremely primitive (and therefore more inspiring). I'm sure we can find many uses for asterisks...

[chemoelectric.livejournal.com]

Sports records aren’t important enough to get that complicated with them.

Stock market records seem to me a kind of quasi-sport, used by droning androids to fill the time between commercials on financial report programs. Thus, not important enough. :)

Credit for scientific discoveries is already treated in appropriate detail, I would say, at least within the scientific community.