Re: BARRY BONDS
Originally posted by Ralph:<br /> As for performance enhancers, let me ask this: does the fact that Kurt Shilling was shot up with painkillers and held together by microsurgery during the playoffs make his accomplishments as null and void as a guy on roids? These drugs and procedures didn't exist even 50 years ago. Where do you draw the line? <br />
No, I don't believe painkillers and surgery qualify as performance enhancers. They merely allow the athlete to compete at or near his/her normal (whatever that is) level. This is not a semantic point either. Steroids, and all of the other drugs I can't name that fall into the ("performance enhancement") category, produce results that an athlete could never achieve without their use.<br /><br />Your question is not relevant because Babe Ruth, Jimmy Foxx, Stan Musial, and the rest of the old-timers had medicine and techniques at their disposal that were not available to their predecessors. Nobody that I know of has ever questioned their accomplishments in that context.<br /><br />I'd like to clarify here that in Barry Bonds' case, I am immensely disappointed. Not due to the recent success he has enjoyed but because of what I believed he was capable of early in his career. For those of you who recall or care to look up his stats for the first ten years of his career, Bonds would not come close to approaching the home run records at the pace he was setting.<br /><br />He was however, in a class by himself, blending power and speed never seen before. He was single-handedly forming a new class of ballplayer who could win with his bat, legs, glove, or arm like none before. But, he was NOT going to hit 73 homeruns in a season or top 600 for his career.<br /><br />I noticed a distinct change in Bonds shortly after he went to SF from Pittsburgh. His glove work dropped off dramatically and he nearly stopped stealing bases altogether. In the meantime, he began hitting homeruns at a prodigious pace even while playing half his games in Candlestick Park, notorious for knocking long fly balls down.<br /><br />I was and am still convinced that Bonds (and a great many others) have changed the game (hopefully not permanently) by padding their stats to appease sponsors and line their pockets. As idealistic as this may sound, I think MLB can and should clean up its act and restore some of the dignity and honesty to a great game, the best game in the world.