Excerpts from an upcoming book (to be published March 27th) detail Barry Bonds' performance-enhancing drug regimen from 1998 onward. Here is ESPN's article on the topic.
Well, the evidence keeps mounting that Bonds did all sorts of shit. One should note first that he had Hall-of-Fame numbers before he did any of that stuff. It should also be noted (and reporters tend to conveniently ignore this fact) that during these times that he is believed to have done stuff (and very likely did do stuff), it was legal for Major League players to use steroids. Not that it was considered a good idea, but in that case it's stupidity rather than both stupidity and cheating. Doing a hindsight witchhunt on somebody isn't particularly fair, and I think a lot of people have been doing that.
Of course, this may have led to some perjury in court (regarding his knowledge of the performance enhancers), so we'll see how that plays out.
I don't know if this is a witchhunt. Did he continue to use steroids after they were made illegal?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure. I think the years covered don't include when baseball considered them illegal. (Also, when I referred to legality before, I was referring to how baseball viewed them. There was no punishment within baseball for 'roids until recently. That has not been true in other arenas for much longer.) Also, the Lords of Baseball knew that it was rampant and they turned their heads and pretended it wasn't there. (Amazingly, Jose Canseco pretty much got it right and his book is actually becoming an important historical document within baseball.)
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