Very soon, maybe today, Barry Bonds will tie Hank Aaron’s home run record. When Bonds “goes yard” with Number 755 those who choose to celebrate the achievement will be met with a Greek chorus of sports purists who will suggest that the milestone is tainted if not irrelevant because of allegations that Bonds used steroids for part of his career.
So here’s a Sunday Paper question for the learned DT audience: What should we think about Barry Bonds? And what does his quandry say about the state of baseball, professional sports, and the nation?
– Ward
{ 20 comments… read them below or add one }
1) The thing that bothers me is the Bonds is a damn liar. Tell the truth, be upfront about it, stop setting a bad example for kids who are suckered into taking an interest in the sport.
2) Hitting however many homeruns is pointless. It’s not a great accomplishment. It won’t be remembered as one of humanity’s finest moments in history. The fact that he’s getting paid tens of millions of dollars for it is one of the great secret shame of our society. The fact that people will care so passionately about this stuff makes me feel ill.
3) This is defense tech news because…..?
…way to open up a can of worms.
For all those that keep complaining that this isn’t defense tech news, give the guy a break. there is only so much news about defense going on. That and a lot of it is classified, or secret so other companies (or governments for matter) don’t learn about it until it’s operational for at least 10 years (only some programs). So, DT a break- there is only so much defense news.
And about Bonds, this tells everyone that money rules America.
Barry Bonds has NEVER tested positive for steroids…anyone who has spent anytime in the gym knows that the definition of sports enhancing drugs changes everytime some pencil neck decides to write a new law…Andro was legal on the professional and collegiate level for quite a while before it was defined as a roid. Next for all you “people” who have never seen the inside of a gym, guess what! The changes that have been witnessed about his growth over the years is the same that would be witnessed by any male that has engaged in vigorous exercise over the course of a lifetime. Give it a rest people. You don’t take any supplement and poof, you have muscles…you still have to put the work in. And lastly, Do you want to know where the biggest source of steroids use is found today??? You guessed it. The Military! Specifically, the Corps,the Army and definitely in the Special Ops community. So yeah boys and girls, its never talked about but you have some serious roid heads in uniform (not even counting the Police and fire departments) so yes this IS a defensetech subject!
Solomon is right. Bonds has NOT tested positive for steroids. He should be considered just as innocent as OJ Simpson….
Steroids use should be considered worse than betting on baseball and the punishment should reflect that level of severity. Lifetime ban is not enough, violaters’ names should “be stricken from every book and tablet…stricken from all pylons and obelisks, stricken from every monument of Egypt. Let the name of… Barry Bonds be unheard and unspoken, erased from the memory of men…for all time.”
Just like Ramses did to Moses- 10 Commandments style.
This is defensetech news because:
1) Development and regular deployment of the “Bonds Navy” is directly contributing to the “1000 Ship Navy” Maritime Strategy, while, at the same time, providing a template for successful prosecution of littoral or brownwater operations in an urban, celebratory environment.
2) Bonds offers a good, easily understood forum to discuss defense-related things like, say, chemical enhancement of special operators, pilots and the like. (And I’m sure, one day soon, we’ll see a similar greek chorus arguing that fighers should be fighting just as they were in Thermoplae. But then they’ll all be beaten by the chemically-enhanced. Maybe. Or the enhanced warriors will completely unravel. Who knows?)
3) At least Bonds can pay for the medical problems stemming from any alleged experiments with his bod. I just don’t want to be in a place where I, as a taxpayer, am going to get saddled with extra medical bills as a wave of steroid-enhanced wanna-be-but-didn’t-make-it professional atheletes start having to clear checks their bodies shouldn’t have been asked to write.
The Sunday Paper is often outside of the normal boundaries of defense news. That’s sort of the point of it. It’s only one post once a week. Live a little.
Oh, I disagree! This post is all about ARMS, man! Barry’s arms are lethal weapons!
And what if he’s traded away? Starting an arms race somewhere?
Things are already tense between Boston and New York! Think of what might happen! The horror, the horror!!!!
As science marches on, there are going to be more and more ways to improve performance, and many people will use them no matter what.
So what about splitting sports into “Unenhanced” and “Enhanced” categories?
Unenhanced means more or less unmodified, unaugmented humans. (Though there will still be gray areas like corrective/elective surgery, pre-natal gene screening and so on).
Enhanced means anything goes, and may the best gene-modified, chemically enhanced, electromechanically augmented cyborg win.
“Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn”.
While we’re considering how to react to Bonds’ upcoming milestone, let’s also look at other “great” baseball players. What about the Hall of Famers who threw spitballs, hid files and sandpaper in their gloves, corked their bats or deliberately tried to injure opposing players with their shoe cleats? Should they all be removed from the HoF, be banned and have their names erased from the record books for the things they did?
bonds? buy some? bond….James Bond? What is this, Ward?…..help me out here. Oh, ah….that funny game stuff……B-ball
(I can’t even bring myself to write its’ awful name…plus, its Sunday, and I don’t want the FOOTBALL god to get righteously mad at me)
LOL!
but, steroids? whether the guy is guilty or not is almost immaterial….the perception (image) is everything….and someone already mentioned the example this sets for younger would-be followers. not good.
state of the nation? Oh, Ward…you have to ask?
(keep them Sunday asides coming. Thanx)
If Pete Rose is banned from the hall of fame this bastard should be.
And
I
Love
The
Picture
Put an asterisk by the stat. Can’t say I’m too worked up about this.
What, what? How does this have anything to do with Defense Technology or national security or the military?
Really, baseball? Baseball news doesn’t belong on defensetech. Please don’t make me lose respect for my favorite defense website.
The world record in the poll vault is several feet higher than it was prior to World War II in no small part because of the use of fiber-glass poles. If records that are achieved by virtue of the use of new equipment are accepted, why not records that are achieved by the use of chemicals and hormones? There are only so many times that you can say that the guy who won the race lost the race before people stop taking you seriously.
this is defence news because there will be 10s of thousands of servicepeople watching the guy as he smacks his runs.
I don’t like Barry Bonds. He has an arrogant “I’m better than you” attitude.
However, he should be innocent until proven guilty, right? As soon as he tests positive for roids I say boot him and erase his name from history, but until then he shouldn’t be held liable for inconclusive allegations.
Sorry to bring this up, but the same can be said for Michael Vick. What he is accused of doing is disgusting, but he has not been convicted yet. I do not think he should be banned from Football until he is proven guilty.
Dunno what the problem is. Professional baseball had an opportunity to test for performance enhancing drugs years ago and chose not to go down that path. Does anyone really believe that this collective resistance to testing was the action of a group of people who had nothing to hide? Do they think that baseball players woke up one morning a few years ago and, while reading their morning paper, found out that their treasured sport had been tarnished by some awful thing call steroids? Because I remember hearing about steroids more than twenty years ago. The bottom line is that, although it is tempting to use an ass like Bonds as a scapegoat, his crime is only that he cheated better than a lot of other players (and managed not to get caught; the league gets the asterix, not just Bonds.
There is a WaPo story on this very thing today:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/31/AR2007073101997.html?hpid=artslot
And you could argue that it does have some defensetech relevance: Where enhanced athletes go, can enhanced soldiers be far behind?