Listening to Mike and Mike in the Morning this morning, Peter Gammons was basically saying that Bonds et al were fairly clear of legal/Seligian punishment, it was solely in the "court of public opinion" where he could face scrutiny. (As for Balco and the trainers however, this is obviously not the case.) Yet still, worthless records in the public's eye wouldn't make my breakfast sit too well if I'm Barry...

Wouldn't it would be very interesting if Barry's numbers tailed off in the 2004 season. I for one believe that Barry must be taking something whether legal or illegal it is helping his body perform in some way. Not to mention the fact that his personality is one of the most unflattering in professional sports.

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Wouldn't it would be very interesting if Barry's numbers tailed off in the 2004 season. I for one believe that Barry must be taking something whether legal or illegal it is helping his body perform in some way.

Of course Barry is taking something to help his performance. What professional or amateur athlete isn't?

Is Barry taking something illegal? Well, that's a different question. I don't think he is, just because there isn't any evidence of it. I wouldn't be surprised if he was, either, but I wouldn't be surprised if 5 guys on every team were.

Cheers,

Mike

Barry's numbers are likely to tail off some this year, as they did last year. He is going to turn 40 in July. Of course, the numbers could tail off some and he could still be the best player in the game...

As to whether he's juicing, I have no idea. I hope he isn't and hasn't, but who knows.

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Barry's numbers are likely to tail off some this year, as they did last year. He is going to turn 40 in July.

So as far as the "Court of Public Opinion" goes, Bonds is screwed either way. If he performs worse than before, it's because he was on 'roids and now he's off of them. If he performs as well (or better), people will claim that it's not possible for a 40 year old to perform that well, so he's obviously on the juice. It's no-win for Barry, so I guess he'll have to console himself with his millions of dollars and his gold house and his rocket car. He doesn't need anything else.

Cheers,

Mike

It's no-win for Barry, so I guess he'll have to console himself with his millions of dollars and his gold house and his rocket car.

If it bothers him, he can just arrange a trade to the Yankees. If he becomes a Yankee, the media and half the public will turn from Barry-haters into Barry-worshippers. The TV guys will slobber all over him. Bob Costas will bat his eyelashes at him and tell him how dreamy he is, and any rift with the public will be instantly healed.

A few points:

- Baseball players have been taking illegal supplements of one sort or another for as long as there has been baseball. Jim Bouton's Ball Four mentions that large numbers of players used to take amphetamines ("greenies") before a game. And those players who don't take drugs cork their bats or put illegal substances on their pitched baseballs.

- The only reason performance-enhancing supplements are bad is because they can cause harm to the human body. If a supplement causes no damage, it's just a new kind of vitamin.

- I have no idea whether Barry Bonds uses, and if so, what. But everybody else has access to the same training methods as he does, and nobody's as good as he is. So, regardless of what happens, Bonds's accomplishments still deserve to be honoured as the achievements they are.

As far as I am concerned, this story is not about Barry Bonds. It is about professional sports and heroes. Coming from the home of Ben Johnson and Ross Rebigliatti, Canadians have something special to offer on the topic.

When baseball and other sports have been successful, the stars of the game have played a large part. These icons, Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Mickey Mantle and Babe Ruth, give fans, and particularly younger fans, someone tangible to root for and to hold on a pedestal. As adults, we know that these heroes are flawed human beings. But, we still hold them to a higher standard than we would others. It is the price of fame and of being a hero.

What does this mean? For a professional athlete to say that it does not matter whether he/she took a performance-enhancing drug that gave him/her an unfair advantage because it is legal will simply not wash. For the game to do nothing about it is simply not excusable. The game is affected much more by this than the question of betting on one's own team.

What would Jason Giambi or Barry Bonds say now publicly if they truly understood the game, and their role in it? "I did not take steroids to my knowledge, but I did take nutritional supplements. If my advisers poisoned my supplements with legal but dangerous steroids, then I have unwittingly had an unfair advantage against my opponents and unwillingly cheated my fans. I hope that this is not the case". I am not holding my breath that either athlete will. No athlete in similar circumstances has done so that I am aware of.

As for the game, we will have to wait for a real Commissioner for any kind of action.

I completely agree with a no nonsense, all-out attack on illeagal steroid use in sports. Seliq and the MLB brass have just been completely unsuccessful in dealing with the matter... This BALCO scandal is huge!!! As the article states, MLB is not cracking down enough on this crucial issue. So, the government is forced to intervene. I'm in no way a bush-fan but this is one of the moves of his that I actually admire.

Sports are important... Not just as an escape, but as a mainstream form of inspiration felt by many. These people who're juicing are public figures that are idolized and looked up to by a lot of people. Furthermore, it's pretty difficult to argue with the point that sports are a pivotal element of our culture and society.

If the games that our society holds dear are being tarnished and undermined by drug abuse and authorities show that they are lax about enforcing rules on such abuse, it will ultimately send a message loud and clear to numerous avenues... First, aspiring athletes will becoming convinced that the only way to get ahead is to cheat, all while abusing their physical and mental health ultimately crushing their own lives and the lives of those around them. Second, as I elluded to before, if a game that we all hold dear is being undermined and cheapened, then our entire culture is being undermined and cheapened.

When people say something to the effect of "the government shouldn't get involved, there are better ways to use government resources...", I see where people are coming from... In some ways, it seems silly that the government would have to get involved... the sports officials should be able to handle it themselves... In my estimations, there is some truth to that position.... Personally however, I just can't buy into it..

The general outlook is that there are still some sports out there that lack the ability to properly enforce these rules more than other certain sports and the MLB is definitely one of them. The article linked implicates baseball's ability to enforce this THG/BALCO scandal as virtually ineffective. You've got your Jose Canseco's sputtering out figures about performance enhancing drugs abuse, you've got your Ken Caminiti admitting that his 'flukish' 1994 nl mvp season was steroid induced... So I don't know if you can blame the government for putting some pressure on...

Furthermore, how many precious resources are the government acutally using to push their sphere of influence into solving the problem??? Is there any tangible evidence that they are wasting resources on this?

I ramble and ramble.... A formal argumentative essay this is not... I'll admit that... but this is how I felt on the matter since the state of the union address when one of my pals stated a similiar positino on the matter... Obviously, I just cannot express enough how frustrating it is to see our game's reputation, class, and moral makeup being tarnished like this...

Before I go though, I'll just add some speculation... Whoever invented THG, and the stealthy designer steroids surrounding the current indictment has gotta be cringing right now... Whoever did create this substance is as good as arrested... Conte, anderson jr. and the others involved should certainly decide to take the plea and expose the guy. Any self-interest whatsoever on the parts of the current defendants would just lend light to that conclusion. Hopefully this hoopla, shenanagins and tom foolery will be dealt with sooner rather than later....

With drug use I just figure 'so what'. If they are staying within the rules of the sport then why should anyone care?

With things like the Olympics we get various degrees of enforcement (each country pretty much tracks their own people outside of the major competitions) and that leads to a joke of a system. Unless of course everyone here believes various US athletes such as Carl Lewis never took steroids/etc despite testing positive a few times (US had even laxer standards in the early 80's thus no punishment).

Baseball I view as the most free enterprise/capitalistic sport out there. If you earn more, you can spend more. If you can find supplements that are legal and push you ahead of others, go ahead and use them. If you don't like the team you are on, become a free agent and move. Since I believe in capitalism as the best of the methods available for running government I don't see any problem with my favourite sport following those same rules. Follow the laws of the land and do the best you can. If someone doesn't keep up, Darwin's law will come into play. (in society I'm a bit looser, but in sports why should I be?)

1. The problem with the hands-off approach to steroid use is that you are forcing young men to make the choice between getting squeezed out of baseball or potentially cutting years off of their lives by going on the juice. I don't want them making that choice.

2. The problem with treating Bonds's accomplishments the same even if he is using something illegal is that baseball is the one sport where we can pretty easily compare across eras. Let's face it, Bonds has reached a point where we are no longer comparing Bonds to Bagwell or Giambi or Vlad; we are comparing Bonds to Ruth and Williams. And while Bonds's contemporaries may have access to the same methods/supplements as Bonds does, those guys did not. (I understand that's a fairly weak argument, given that they also didn't have the strength training, sports medicine, etc.). But if Bonds has access to something even his contemporaries don't/won't take, then the comparisons are all messed up, because we can't even compare relative to the era at that point.

Just personal opinion here, but I've always had a nagging feeling Bonds was taking something illegal, his super-human size seems a little much to say he "just started a good work out routine". Even acounting for his team of chefs and trainers that boy aint right. It may not be the best example but did you see him in "Rookie of the year"? He had the physique of O-Dog. Flash forward a few years and he's sporting almost comicaly large arms and shoulders. And if thats all natural, I gotta switch gym memberships.

I am happy the US government is getting involved in pro sports steroid crackdown. MLB owners are not concerned about this issue.

Cocaine is a different story: cocaine use burns out a player sharply and quickly, therefore the owners and union worked together to help stamp out the famous cocaine use MLB saw in the 70s and 80s.

Steroids, on the other hand, increase homeruns which owners think put more fans in the seats. Steroids break down an individual over the long term, owners don't care about the quality of a ballplayer's old age. The Government has to step in and enforce this. I'm glad Bush is a sports fan and is paying attention.

Steroids in pro sports break down the moral fibre of the entire society.

Agree with Jobu.

You have to be pretty naieve to think Bonds isn't on steroids. Sammy Sosa as well. You have to be born with those bodies, not manufacture them. Those guys should have been big in high school.

You can't pretend these guys aren't on the juice and then say you don't want the government to get involved: you're living in a dangerous fantasy life then.

I have to disagree somewhat with the concept that men can't develop such physiques naturally. Anecdotally: when I joined my gym, I weighed roughly 170lbs. After six months, with no change to my diet, and no supplements/drugs etc, I weighed 190lbs. My body fat percentage also decreased substantially.

This was done via 2-hour workouts, six days a week. Most athletes subject themselves to far more strenuous and complete workouts.

Note, I'm not saying that there are no athletes who cheat. What I'm saying is don't paint with a broad brush. If I can make such significant changes to my physique in six months, what can an athlete do over half a decade or more?

Bonds and Sosa have physiques beyond what I could ever achieve, but that doesn't imply, in and of itself, that they must be on steroids. There is a chance that that's the case, but its not a certainty.

Finally, individuals aren't just "naturally" big. Muscles atrophy over time if they aren't used. If Bonds never hit the weight room, or exerted his muscles otherwise, then of course he would be skinnier. Just as I was before I started my workouts.

Let's not have knee-jerk reactions to these stories in the press. Rather, let's analyze the data and come to a rational conclusion, whatever it may be.

What perlkack said ...

Plus, most everyone has a tendency to put on weight as they age. People who don't exercise tend to add fat; athletes who lift weights and don't do long-distance sports tend to put on muscle.

Sure, it's POSSIBLE that Bonds hasn't used andro, THG, HGH or steroids. But the evidence is mounting, in my opinion.

First, the visual evidence. Yes, it's possible to put on the kind of muscle-based weight that Bonds put on just before he hit 73. But a 20-lb. gain over one offseason is pretty rare. Perlhack says he did it over 6 months training 6 days per week, 2 hours per day. Bonds had about 5 months in that offseason, and that's assuming he started right away; didn't take a few weeks to vacation with family, didn't ease up just before ST, etc. Seasons over, he heads to the gym the next day and attacks the weights. Possible. However, it's easier, IMO, to put on 20 lbs. going from 170 and not lifting at all than it is to go from an already fairly muscular 215 to 235, like Bonds did. Gets exponentially harder to get those kinds of gains. Finally, doesn't it seem a little odd that only a handful of players have had the kind of increase in mass that Bonds has had? I mean, really, Sammy blows up and starts hitting 60 a year. Mac takes andro and hits 70. Bonds puts on 20 pounds and hits 73. So do we really believe that those guys are just so much more dedicated than the 600 other MLB players that we don't see other guys putting on 20 lbs. in the offseason every year? There are a few other guys, but most other players (visually, at least) seem to fit into the category of experiencing muscle mass increases in line with "normal" weightlifting.

I don't believe that people generally gain weight as they age, unless it's from becoming more sedentary and getting fat. There are probably a few who gain muscle mass, but most either gain fat or lose weight.

Second, he's linked to guys that have now been indicted for pushing steroids.

Yeah, it's still possible that Bonds took nothing but vitamins and minerals. But it's not looking good.

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Yeah, it's still possible that Bonds took nothing but vitamins and minerals. But it's not looking good.

Is anyone saying he took "nothing but vitamins and minerals"?

There's a big difference between protein shakes and androstenedione and stanazol. If Bonds took andro around the same time McGwire did, I don't really see the problem, as it wasn't a banned substance and you could walk down to the local GNC and pick it up.

I'm sure Bonds has been taking all kinds of things. But are those things:

1. Illegal and/or
   
2. Banned by MLB
   

There's really no evidence that the stuff Bonds has been taking falls into either of these camps. It seems that most of the sports writers who have already publicly convicted Bonds don't know the difference between dehydroepiandrosterone and cortisol, but we should believe that they're experts?

Cheers,

Mike

I can't give the "Bonds got bigger so he must be on steroids" argument any credibility, unless perhaps it's coming from someone with a degree in physiology.

Yeah, most people don't put on weight like Bonds. But most people aren't Barry Bonds. Remember:

a) Barry Bonds is an incredibly elite athlete, and probably one of the most physically fit people on the planet;
b) Barry Bonds has a heck of a lot of money to spend on the best trainers, equipment and supplements.

It's like assuming that someone who suddenly has a lot of money must have stolen it. Anything's possible, but nothing's certain without evidence.

Of course, we don't know at this point whether Giambi or Bonds are on steroids because their test results have been kept confidential. What we do know is that they got their nutritional supplements at BALCO, and that BALCO's client CJ Hunter tested positive in 2000 for steroids (in large amounts). At the time BALCO defended Hunter saying that his supplements were "inadvertently contaminated". Shades of "wardrobe malfunction".

Underlying all of this is baseball's ambivalence. Baseball was ambivalent about performance-detracting drugs in the late 70s and early 80s and they flourished. Now, underneath it all, I am not sure that baseball, read the owners, really care whether one or several of their players are on steroids. The player assumes the health risk and the team's performance does not suffer.

Will there be a GM who will do what Whitey Herzog did in the early 80s.He simply got rid of players who were on drugs and not in a treatment program. It was a simple message, and it was pretty effective (and the Cardinals made it to the World Series in 85 and 87 notwithstanding some talent losses in drug-related trades).

Having said all of this... I cannot wait to see who else is going to be implicated when this whole trial unfolds. JN up there was saying that baseball is free enterprise/capitalist/every man out for himself/etc...

Given the situation that the 4 men who got indicted today are in... I highly doubt that they'll be taking the entirity of the hit for the balco scandal. They're just the middlemen, Ashcroft wants to cut of the head and not just the toes of this operation so to speak. Those espn links at the top there already speculate plea bargains, deal cutting, and once again everyone just looking out for themselves.

It may start with an indictment against 4 people, but it may not end there. Maybe Ashcroft wants the biggest fish of them all, and that is a Bonds, or Sosa, or Giambi put on a silver platter and roasted in the court for all to see... An example to be made or something.... Also, we haven't even seen the inventor of thg or any of the other highly sophisticated drugs that this company was producing put on trial yet either...

It will be very very interesting to see how the rest of this case unfolds....

I will wait and see before making a final judgment, of course. But...

1. There isn't much evidence that Barry Bonds is an elite athlete. He's an elite baseball player, but I'm not sure that puts him the category of those people most likely to experience extraordinary gains in muscle mass in a short period of time. What makes Bonds special is his ability to hit a baseball, not necessarily his ability to run, jump and lift.

I just can't use Bonds's athleticism as a rationale for calling his bulking up anything but extraordinary. There are probably 100 or more MLB players that are more athletic and fit than Bonds, in the way we normally use those terms. They just can't hit a baseball as often or as far as Barry.

2. In real terms, virtually every other MLB player has as much money to spend on fitness as Barry does. At least if they're not married. ;-) Seriously, if you make over $1MM per year, your ability to hire the best nutritionists and trainers is virtually the same as Barry's. So why aren't there more guys putting on these 20-lb. weight gains over a single winter? They just don't have the interest or commitment? Cat and Kielty could go from 15-HR guys and 4th OF types to 35-HR guys and long-term contracts, but they just don't feel like it? Carlos could hit 60 HR instead of 45 HR, but he'd rather listen to jazz than work out like Barry? O-Dawg could turn into Bret Boone and make himself $8MM per year, but he's just not interested?

Again, I don't KNOW anything. But I sure suspect something.

I keep hearing about these extraordinary gains in muscle mass Bonds allegedly attained. What I remember was a guy who got a little bit bigger from age 32 to age 37.

Lurker, he's truly an athlete...Even though Bonds has aged remarkably well in terms of his bat, his 8-time Gold Glove defense (as recently as 1998) has taken a hit, as has his SB, for which he's finished T10 9 times (again, as recently as 1998). But it was an expected decline because 1998 was his age 35 season. Bonds has proven himself in every aspect of the game, he's hardly had the one dimensional career you allude to.

As per your second point: there are very few people who are so dedicated that they'd dedicate their lives to working out when they're being paid more money than they know what to do with. It's much of the reason a guy like Michael Jordan ruled over basketball. Sure he had skill but he had an amazing work ethic that went far beyond every other player's. Further, even if he did have that work ethic, the players making the most money will always have better staff than those who make less. There's no set rate for the top of the fitness industry, if you can offer the best in the business more than your opponent, whose going to get the better training?

Regardless of whether he is/isn't on supplements, it'll still come down to the semantics what what is banned, should be banned, etc. And when we do find out if/what he used, it'll be in his best-selling biography.

I meant ... a little bit every year ...

http://mlb.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/mlb/news/mlb_press_release.jsp?ymd=20040213&content_id=637046&vkey=pr_mlb&fext=.jsp
COMN for Bud's statement on the issue. Only Bud would speak of an evolutionary process to remove a poison.

One technical point that I'd like to clear up: androstenedione is a steroid. That's a purely biochemical classification, and there are lots of steroid hormones (cortisol, aldosterone, etc.) that have no anabolic effects. More importantly, however, androstenedione has some androgenic action and undergoes peripheral conversion to testosterone (a more potent androgen), although there is some debate regarding the clinical effect of androstenedione supplements.

If indeed it is true that androstenedione supplementation helps an athlete build body mass, then it does do through the same mechanisms as testosterone, stanozolol, nandrolone, or any other legal or illegal androgen. The only significant difference, as far as I know, is that testosterone has a direct androgenic effect, whereas androstenedione has to be converted into a more potent androgen (mainly in the liver) first.

I don't think it will ever be possible to eradicate drug use from sport. You can't tell endogenous testosterone from supplements; if you set your doping threshold on your blood or urine test at the level representing the Xth percentile of the general population, then everyone will dope up to that level. In an imaginary world in which all drugs could be detected through lab tests, drug use could actually be seen as levelling the biochemical playing field.

I'm with Dave Till on this issue. If a supplement causes no harm to the human body, then it's absolutely no one's business whether or not a player takes it. However, I really hope that MLB and governments take all reasonable steps to disincentivize the use of anabolic steroids and other dangerous drugs. I'm not sure how this could be done, quite frankly, and I'm not in favor of demonizing users, considering what the incentives for steroid use are.

From a strictly legal perspective, it's none of our business whether baseball players take andro or not; from a public health perspective, the line between legal and illegal steroids is pretty darn blurry.

The above has nothing in particular to do with Barry Bonds. I have expressed no opinion on the possibility that he might have taken any performance-enhancing substance, legal or illegal.

John

I think one reason everyone is talking about this is because Barry is a hitter. For all we know Clemens, Johnson and even Schilling could be on the juice. They are all late 30s early 40s players who can still dominate the game. I personally dont think hes on anything. One of the signs of steriod usage is that the body becomes more fragile and breaks easier. McGuire was a good example of this. He was on the dl som many times he had to retire. There are ways around this but Bonds has been consistent in that he's played in at least 140 the last four years with the exception being last year because of his father's death. By comparison Juan Gonzalez has played in 140 games once over the past four years, each time sidelined with major injury.

I also realize that steroids bulk people up but at the same time you still have to be able to hit the ball and make good contact. If the world's strongest man got in there, he could take 100 swings and miss everytime perhaps while I highly doubt Bonds would do such a thing. Sure hate him because he's a bad person to the media and maybe on juice, but at least give him respect for still being able to hit the ball in this way late into his career.

I cant believe I'm defending Bonds.

There isn't much evidence that Barry Bonds is an elite athlete.

No evidence? Give me a break. The man trains all day, every day, year round. His daily workout routine would kill most of us. From a USA Today feature:

In four months, Bonds lowered his body fat to 8% from 12%, and is bench-pressing 315 pounds, up from 230. There were sprints to be run, and run, and run. He looks more muscular, more defined, more powerful. His biceps stretch his jersey's sleeves to the limit.

The date on that, by the way, was April 1997, so he's been doing the same thing for nearly seven years.

This article, from 2003, documents Barry's reliance on Anderson and Conte, but that's hardly news. Scroll down to the bottom to see what Barry does put in his body every day. You wouldn't think he'd need much more to fuel that finely-tuned machine.

Dave Till/John Neary: I think I have 100% the opposite view. I suppose I have the naive view that the basic problem with steroids in sports is that it's cheating. The analogy with "a new kind of vitamin" seems off -- vitamins are naturally available in food and as far as I know the same is not true of steroids. Also, is there evidence that taking extra vitamins/minerals really does anything for anybody to any extent anywhere near what taking steroids does? Barry Bonds (see article linked by Coach above) may be a true believer in vitamins and minerals, but I'm more inclined to credit the workout. (I am not making any claim about Bonds and steroids)

As for banning steriods because they're harmful to the body -- competitive sports and issues of cheating aside, let the individual be the one to decide that.

I just can't use Bonds's athleticism as a rationale for calling his bulking up anything but extraordinary.

Actually, I think athleticism has little to do with bulking up. Its a combination of testoterone, its pre-cursors, and HGH that allow an individual to add muscle mass and heal quickly. Athletes tend to have higher levels than the average person, or so it is reported.

HGH, in particular, is important. It's responsible for the rate of healing of injured tissue. When you lift weights at the gym, what you are really doing is tearing muscle fibres. If you have consumed a sufficient amount of protein during the day, and have good levels of HGH in your body, then the torn tissues will be repaired; essentially, more tissue is created to bridge the tear, and the muscle becomes bigger.

(Aside: if your levels of HGH are too high, you'd experience severe physical effects, including gigantism and deformation of organs; anyone remember The Simpson's episode with Ken Griffey Jr? In the Guiness Book of World Records, the tallest man in the world had a malfunctioning or over-stimulated pituitary gland which produced too much HGH.)

Here's an excellent article I read a few months ago; it's about a non-professional cyclist who wanted to know what it's like to take steroids and HGH. Fascinating read, though very long.

8 foot 11 inches - Robert Wadlow.