Barry Bonds

Barry Bonds
First off, let me say that I am not a baseball fan. In fact, I care about Baseball about as much as I care about Hockey and Soccer. They are just sportcenter fillers until Basketball and Football are on.

The excerpts in Sports Illustrated are really getting the sports media hot. In essence the article says that Barry Bonds took steroids like they were the last meal and Home Town Buffet. Tee article also goes on to say his motivation is that he was jealous of Mark Macquire during his run and the home run record.

I don't know if Bonds took the steroids even after all of this so called evidence. The reason that I call it this is that most of what the reporters got is from court evidence during the Balco investigation. In this investigation several people were indicted and found guilty. My point is, if this were real evidence they certainly would have convicted Bonds as well. he had been one of the primary targets of the investigation.

Secondly, the guys on talk radio are making much of the accusation that Bonds did all of this in jealousy of Big Macs run in 98. How in the world could they possibly know this. Its one thing to try to decipher the facts of a case, but you can never really know what he was thinking at the time. Has Bonds been the type of person that craves media attention? He seems like the opposite. he wants people to bow down and leave him alone.

Here are Bonds HR numbers since 93. If you take out his super season of 73 which came in 2001.,it seems pretty consistent. The main point of the article is that he started taking the steroids after 98, the year in which he hit 37. He hit even less the next year.

46,37,33,42,40,37,34,49,73,46,45,45

Also, people make a bid deal out of his size compared to when he was younger. He certainly is huge now, but aren't they testing for drugs now? Why hasn't he gotten smaller like people suggested he would when baseball finally got around to taking this serious.

Who do you root for?

With the Olympics over and all this talk of medal counts, I got to thinking about who and why I root for things. I could have actually cared less that US won twenty something medals. I probably watched a total of 30 minutes of coverage over the course of the entire event. When I was younger, I can remember caring about this type of stuff. Now I don’t think it matters. I usually just root for the underdog.

For me rooting interest depends on the degrees of separation.
• Primary Family: If my wife gets a raise or my son learns a new word, I am personally proud because in some way I either participated or otherwise made possible the event (even if it means I just stepped out of the way).

• Friends: This depends on the friend and how much you were involved. If you spent a lot of time and effort with a person, you could feel the same sense of pride that you would from a primary family member. I went to high school with Kenny Williams, the general manager of the White Sox. I think its great that he has done all that he has, but he could not pick me out of a line up. I don’t find myself rooting for him at all.

• General Family: If one of my cousin graduates from Law school, I think its great but I don’t take any real pleasure from this. He did the work. I am happy for him, but not happy for myself. My father sometimes calls me up during a game to say that “number 56 is your cousin”. I have never met the guy before. Everybody is my cousin. Unless he plans of dropping some cash on me, I am really not that interested.

• Local Proximity: A lot of people really get into this one, but I don’t get it. If you went to the same school as Jason Kidd, what does that have to do with you unless you were the one that was actually taking his tests? I can understand if you still root for your college team because your are still involved with the school in some way, but if you are not still active from an alumnae standpoint and can’t name any of the players, I am not sure why you invest much into if you team makes the NCAA basketball tournament. I am not pulling for my elementary school to do well in the district spelling bee. Another one in this category is famous person X lived in MY city. I live in Oakland. Tom Hanks went to school near where I currently live. Am I supposed to take any great pleasure in this?

• National: With the end of the Cold War, this just doesn’t mean as much as it used to. Nothing was better from a rivalry standpoint than the USA versus the eastern block countries. They didn’t like us and we didn’t like them. Now everyone trains and goes to college here. Why does it matter where they are born when they are going to end up US citizens anyway? Should it matter that a sprinter was born in Florida versus Cuba?

My wife would probably say this is all fine, but you care an awful lot about how the Cowboys do every year. This is actually very true but there is a difference…. I like sports in general but its only football in general and the Cowboys specifically that really peaks my interest. I can remember watching their games before I went to school. My father introduced me to the team and I have followed them ever since. Because I have been involved for so long I would place my interest at the close family/friend level.