I am pissed off and you get to read about it

I am so fucking pissed off about this. This isn’t as big a
deal as the war in Iraq, or our fucked up economy, but if you read this whole thing you will see that it is a way bigger deal than some people think. Let me start from the beginning.

Major league baseball is well over 100 years old. It is deep
with tradition. No milestone in baseball or all of sports is more cherished
than the lifetime home run record.

It basically became the milestone that it is in 1935 when
babe Ruth retired with 714 home runs. In 1980, well before steroids became a
problem in baseball, only 3 out of the infinite number of baseball players in
the history of the game had hit even 600 homers.

In 1947 Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in baseball
forever changing the game and forever making talent and hard work the only official
requirements to be a professional baseball player.

In 1954 a man named Hank Aaron began his career that would
end with him breaking Babe Ruth’s home run record and forcing people who still
believed that the black man didn’t belong in baseball to shut their ignorant
mouths and accept that we really are all equal. Actually, they may not have
accepted it, but they did shut their mouths.

Hanks journey was not an easy one. He had to deal with a lot
of ugliness as he grew closer to Babe Ruth’s coveted record. He ended the 1973
season just one home run shy of the Babe’s record.

Through the following winter he received numerous death
threats from people who did not want to see a black man hold our nations most
important sports record. It was later revealed that the Atlanta Journal had
secretly written an obituary for Hank after they had received many of these
letters from Klansman who didn’t know where else to send them and probably
assumed that the newspaper would print these letters in their opinion
column.

He dealt with teammates who wouldn’t sit by him. He dealt
with his own team’s fans booing and taunting him. He endured racial slurs from
every aspect of the game but he did nothing more than ignore all of this ignorance
and played the game with the class and dignity that I would use as an example
to my children when teaching them lessons about any aspect of life.

Hank Aaron sacrificed himself in many ways to help us
overcome the racism that has plagued America for so long. And because of
it we live in a more tolerant country.

That is why I get so pissed off when someone like Barry
Bonds can walk into major league baseball, cheat his way into the record books,
and then call anyone who challenges his accomplishments a racist.

Barry broke Hank Aarons record in 2007. There is numerous
evidence that he used steroids to get his home run numbers where they are. I
will keep this short and as un-boring as possible.

At the end of the 2000 season he had gained 15 pounds of
muscle and improved his yearly home run numbers fairly substantially over the
previous two years. It is only a tad suspicious that a 36 year old man would
suddenly find a way to add the muscle and the numbers that he did, but not
incredibly unreasonable to claim that he did this honestly. At this point he
had never hit more than 49 home runs in a season and was just considered one of
the best hitters in his generation.

Then, in the year 2001, over the span of one season, at the
age of 37, he added 18 more pounds of muscle, and hit a major league record 73
homers in one season breaking Mark McGwire’s record of 70 (Set three years earlier). McGwire is another one that has endless evidence of steroid use.

Barry Bonds will swear up and down that there is nothing
strange about the fact that at an age when most men are nearing retirement, he
improved his numbers from his previously most productive season by almost 50% and did so without cheating.

Before the steroid controversy began, only two people had
hit over 60 home runs in a season (Babe Ruth with 60 and Roger Maris with 61).
Now we have these mutants with huge heads hitting over 70? And both of them
doing so at an age when most players are well past their prime?

I wish I could find the video I saw of Barry insinuating
that those who question his feats are doing so to help their racist agenda. I
am sure that Hank Aaron is glad that he went through all that he did so that
someone like Barry could hide behind the racism card whenever he is called out
for being the asshole that he is.

There is so much more to this but I have tried to keep from
sounding like a boring history teacher. Many people don’t see what the big deal is. “So what if these people want to destroy their own health to entertain us. It’s a
victimless crime right?” FUCKING WRONG!!

Our children look up to these people. Some of our children
aspire to grow up and compete on the same field as these people. But what is
going to happen to our children when they get to college and realize that they
will have a hard time making the team because half of their competition are
using steroids and showing twice the production as the clean players.

Is that a choice you want your 18 year old child to face in
his first year away from home? How many kids do you think have felt that drive
to be their best and looked to these scumbags for inspiration and seen that
some of their heroes found a magic a shortcut to success?

What they don’t ever get informed about though, is the
drawbacks. Steroids can lead to cancerous tumors, elevated blood pressure,
drastic changes in cholesterol levels, serious heart problems, violent mood
swings (Roid Rage), and very commonly in younger people, suicide.

The fact that the records in my sport are tainted forever is
tragic. But it is not life or death. It is just something that makes me sad as
a die hard baseball purist. But the fact that these people have the influence
on our youth that they do is something that still plagues our country to this
day. And everyone with kids who love sports should be angry as hell about it.

I thought that Alex Rodriguez was the answer. I believed
that he was clean. I was sure that he was going to shatter the home run record
in the next 6 years and allow it to be back in the hands of someone honest. A
role model. I believed him 100% when he looked us in the face on national
television last year and said that he never did steroids. I was happy that he
was going to set a good standard for our kids to live by.

But that was all a lie too. He belongs in the same category
with other cheaters like Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, Barry Bonds, Jose Canseco,
and Roger Clemons (one of the worst liars of them all).

Don’t look at A-rod as being any better than these people
because he told the truth in the end. He lied his ass off until that positive
drug test was discovered by Sports illustrated and he would have lied his way
right into infamy and the baseball hall of fame had he never been caught.

Telling the truth after you get caught does not make you
honorable. Coming clean before you get caught because it’s the right thing to
do does gives you some honor, but still not nearly as much honor as playing the
game right in the first place and never taking something you didn’t earn.

Some of these cheaters are starting to see that they may
have been better off playing the game right. Every year a panel gets together
to vote on what retired players get to be included in the baseball hall of fame. A
player becomes eligible after 5 years of retirement. McGwire has come up for a
vote twice now and didn’t even come close the first year and received even less
the second. Normally a player with over 500 home runs is a shoe in for the hall
(McGwire has 583 making him 8th all time on the list with 47 more
homers than Mickey Mantle) but the panel is showing that cheaters do not
deserve this honor.

It will be very interesting to see what happens in 3 years
when Barry Bonds becomes eligible. I bet he doesn’t make it in. That my
friends, will be an excellent lesson for our youth.

I would love to hear some people’s feedback on this matter.
Especially from anyone who disagrees. Please post below. I promise to be nice.