My thing with PEDs has always been that we need to pursue knowledge, not prosecution. I care much more about knowing who did what and when so we can judge those players in the court of public opinion than punishing players for their cheating or lying in a court of law. Baseball is a numbers game and whether we should or not, we all like to compare players across eras. It is important to me as a fan to understand relative greatness of players in the game, and for me, PED usage GREATLY impacts my opinion of a player's relative place in history. This is what so many Bonds defenders just don't get. They think he is being scapegoated because of his race or because of his attitude. That isn't the case for me. I care way, way more about what Bonds and Clemens and any other HOF level player did than any of the other random scrubs that will be lost to history, because these players not only unfairly got an advantage over players in their own era, but they unfairly took a place in hisotry that don't deserve.
It irks me to no end that generations to follow won't know or care about how numbers from this era were artificially inflated. They'll just look at the record books and decide, as I once did, that Barry Bonds is the greatest hitter of all time. I don't think Bonds deserves jail time, but he also does not deserve that honor either. He is a cheater and no matter what he implies and Mcguire outright says about how they would have been just as great without the juice (which is total BS), their numbers should forever be severely discounted by historians and fans of the game. But I've met many, many people who don't do that. I've met many who say, "Bonds is the home run king, he's the greatest. He's better than Aaron, he's better then Ruth. Anyone who says otherwise is a hater." That attitude of acceptance of cheating and discounting of the impact of PEDs drives me crazy.
It irks me to no end that generations to follow won't know or care about how numbers from this era were artificially inflated. They'll just look at the record books and decide, as I once did, that Barry Bonds is the greatest hitter of all time. I don't think Bonds deserves jail time, but he also does not deserve that honor either. He is a cheater and no matter what he implies and Mcguire outright says about how they would have been just as great without the juice (which is total BS), their numbers should forever be severely discounted by historians and fans of the game. But I've met many, many people who don't do that. I've met many who say, "Bonds is the home run king, he's the greatest. He's better than Aaron, he's better then Ruth. Anyone who says otherwise is a hater." That attitude of acceptance of cheating and discounting of the impact of PEDs drives me crazy.
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