MORE FUN TO DRINK WITH? RUTH

Using those drugs is cheating. Barry Bonds, according to accounts he hasn’t contested, is a cheater. This cheating isn’t a technical violation of some arbitrary rule, like driving 68 in a 65mph zone on a clear day with zero traffic.

This kind of cheating is a form of theft. It aims to steal the benefits of victory from those who follow the rules. You could calculate the money, plenty, and intangibles, much more. The problem is the disparity between drug users and non drug users.

If the rules were changed to permit all performance drugs, then if a user beats a non-user, no big deal. The only problem with simply allowing performance enhancing drugs is that some of them are harmful, and can fuck you up pretty bad.

If it means breaking Babe Ruth’s record, it would seem, a professional athlete should be allowed to do his or her own risk/reward analysis. Unfortunately, if the drugs are seen as necessary for success, all athletes will take them and they’ll cease to provide an advantage. Those closest to the pinnacle would want to experiment with new stuff to take them to the stratosphere, like test pilots, like Barry Bonds.

It’s a societal issue. Any sane parent would rather have little Johnny chilling with a little weed than raging around on roids. But if the pros do it, every Pony League middle schooler will be looking to bulk up. If you think of fame and fortune as the benefit of taking roids, very few users will realize any benefit at all, but all will pay the price.

If Barry Bonds plays this season he’ll pass Babe Ruth in all-time home runs. The Babe was a regular guy. He’d stand at the bar and down a beer and a hot dog with you. Barry won’t look you in the eye. Poor Barry is not a regular guy. I gather from the local sports press that players don’t like him much.

Ty Cobb was one of the greatest all around players in history. He was a prick. Everybody hated him. So when his name comes up they say, “Great player, what an asshole!” But don’t believe me about Ty Cobb’s NASTY PERSONALITY.

Being a regular guy, comfortable with yourself, and comfortable around others, is not a skill, it’s a disposition that poor Barry Bonds just lacks. It comes from thinking of yourself as a reasonably, but not especially, good person, and having the natural reflex to treat everyone as your equal (which of course, they are).

A rookie for the A’s, just up from the minors, asked in a post game interview about his sudden increase in income said, “I’m just glad to have a car that doesn’t die at every red light.” That’s a regular guy.

I guess it’s not impossible that MLB will successfully clamp down on performance enhancing drugs. If so, and other things being equal, the home runs per season ceiling would return to 60, where it had been for at least sixty years. MLB record books would show a major spike in home runs in the steroid seasons. Barry would be hung up on that spike like a parachutist on a radio tower, more an oddity than anything else: “Look at the steroid guy!”

Or, if performance enhancing drugs continue to be used, Bond’s records will be eclipsed soon enough anyway, and still nobody will like him. He can’t win.

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