Who is more to blame?

Question

I have listened to the whole steroids issue long enough to come up with my own perspective.....Why is Bud Selig trying make Barry Bonds the scapegoat and not taking responibilty in some way about players using performance enhancing drugs like Steroids, Meth, HGH and so on? This could of been avoided a long time ago if the MLB put in a drug testing policy like the NFL a long time ago! Granted it was wrong for players to use them but if it was more of a don't as then don't tell policy! Barry Bonds is a great player Period!!! I have watched the guy for years and steroids does not help a person see a ball better or decide which pitch there going to swing for! I think what Bonds did was wrong but nobody says anything about the pitcher's Bonds was facing and how they could of been juiced up as well! Bonds has a a#@ like quality about himself but he is no different from the 100's of other players that took them but there not going to hit 755 with or without Roids! Give the guy his do!

Answer 1

Bud Selig is not trying to make Bonds the scapegoat, it's the fans that are trying to make Bonds the scapegoat. All you have to do is read the questions and answers on this site and way over 50% responding are against Bonds. None of us have a clue as to how the monatoring is going because no names are released of those that fail the drug test untill the time they reach the point of suspension time. Right or wrong, fans will always have an opinion but I don't see how any of us can blame Selig for anything.

Answer 2

MLB does have a drug testing policy. The stuff Barry uses is not detectable. Is that Selig's fault? Should we praise Barry for being better at cheating than the MLB at catching him?

There is very little PHYSICAL difference between a ball that reaches the warning track and one that travels a few feet farther. Yet where $$$ is involved there is a MONUMENTAL difference. Taking steroids can earn a player millions.

Re: Barry's talent.
Barry couldn't hit 35 HR in any season as a Pirate.
From '93 to '99 he averaged 38 per season.
From 2000 to 2004 he averaged 51.6.
That's what steroid use can do.

Q: Who is to blame?
A: The fans and the owners.

Answer 3

Selig is not necessarily trying to make Bonds a scapegoat. Bonds is going after the record and was one of the athletes that the book Game of Shadows concentrated on so the media has also focused a lot of attention on Bonds. Bonds' demeanor doesn't help him very much either.

Selig is in a tough spot. The owners and MLB needed something to bring the fans back after the '94 strike and the '95 lockout. In baseball's past, whenever it gets in a jam, it turns to homeruns, after 1919, after Brooklyn and the Giants moved out west, and now after the mid nineties work stoppage. When the players came back, many of them were stronger. The old addage that muscles impede your swing was obliterated. The owners and MLB did not look into how the players got so strong, they apparently just overlooked it because the turnstiles were beginning to turn again. All of this took place on Selig's watch. Bud was also a partial owner of the Brewers in the mid-nineties so he needed the fans to come back for more reasons than just MLB's benefit.

Whether the owners and MLB looked the other way on performance enhancing drugs will be very hard to actually prove. When push came to shove and the public and the media began to put pressure on MLB and the MLBPA, they improved the drug testing and made the penalties more severe. Missing 50 days for a first offense is almost one-third of a season, football and basketballs aren't that severe.

When Congress decided to get involved, Selig had to do something. Baseball has been exempt from antitrust laws since the Supreme Court decided that baseball was a sport and not a business in 1922, (the NFL lost their antitrust case in 1958 and the NBA also is considered a business and falls under antitrust regulations). MLB and the owners want to keep it that way so the government can't put antitrust regulations on them. Congress realizes this, and on slow days when they get bored, Congress likes to remind MLB that if it wants to keep its antitrust status, it'll have to cater to public officials who want to look good to their constituants by coming down hard on billionaire owners and millionaire players. Selig asked former Senator and minority leader George Mitchell to do an investigation into steroids to keep Congress off MLB's back. Mitchell can't force the players to cooperate by subpeonaing them, but he also can't give them immunity if they admit to using performance enhancing drugs without a prescription, which is against a 1990 federal law. So, when Mitchell says come and talk, and the MLBPA says no, Selig can say that he is trying to rid the game of drugs but the union won't let him. It gets the heat off of him and onto the union.

Mitchell will talk to Jason Giambi. But Giambi's lawyers are going to talk to Mitchell first and organize what will be asked and what will be answered. Why should Giambi and Mitchell bother getting together if everything has already been scripted?!?!?!

It is all a bunch of men who realize that they made a big mistake, trying to save face and continue to make money.

Answer 4

Selig, Bond -- the egg or the chicken. Look, the guys who took steroids knew it wasn't right. Selig knew they were taking them and he didn't act. Who's more to blame? Toss a coin.
Bonds is a great player. However, we'll never know just how great. If he care a whit about the fans or baseball and if he weren't an outright unapologetic racist -- he is the only black man in baseball I can say that about outright -- perhaps people would be less inclined to dismiss his career. He doesn't care about us: so then we don't care about him.

Answer 5

Bud Seilig wanted Bonds and the others to be juiced up so that they could win fans back with that great homerun year of 99.

Answer 6

HGH is undectable. There's crap-all any league can do to prevent millionaire athletes, who all have connections to numerous personal trainers, and doctors, from acquiring HGH. Nothing. If you think the NFL, a league in which 230 lbs men sprint nearly as fast as track stars, is drug free, you're dreaming.