i for one do not hold any animosity or hatred for players who have been found taking "the juice" or for the ones who have yet to be found guilty of such substances. i don't hold any grudges for the 100+ listed in the mitchell report and many more in the history of the game that will never have to face such judgement.
don't get me wrong... personally, i enjoyed baseball more when i first got into the game in the 80s and early 90s when low scoring pitching duels and small ball weren't just some rare obscurity... where players of smaller stature were an everyday occurrence. since then, it seems as though owners and front offices have been pushing this new version of the game where final scores and player physiques resembled the NFL more than america's national past time in hopes of making a more exciting and inticing game to newbies and in turn getting higher ticket sales and TV ratings to line their already fat pockets.
alternately, i will hold these greedy owners and corporate lackeys in the MLB offices accountable not only for having a hand in this steroid circus but also for constantly putting the fan and consumer further on down the list of priorities with inflated concession and parking prices and making bonehead decisions such as moving successful expansion teams to other cities where the markets are already well established by other organizations (which amounts to brand new stadiums created by taxpayer money full of empty seats). how about those squeeky clean overpriced jerseys in shops, made by young children in hellish sweatshops working for a tiny fraction of what they're actually sold for (in some 3rd world country most american's probably can't pronounce anyway) in the name of maximum profits.
the Bonds and Manny types are easy targets for an overly dramatic media who put these types of personalities on blast just like gossiping talk show and soap opera kings/queens that saturate the tv schedule. why? because they are rude and arrogant? or because they are not "corporate cloned professionals" that play into the medias hands like silly puddy. lets put things in perspective... instead of sensationalizing entertainment news and yellow journalism, the media and should be focusing on the real criminals, say for instance ghastly souls guilty of crimes against humanity (i need not list names). what a concept eh?
i will end with these quotes:
"What continues to fascinate me is how MLB leadership is willing to allow individual players to take the full brunt of the collective failure of leadership. Today, pundits have ranted in at times rabid tones about the players who make millions for their role while those who make the hundred of millions (and even have billion- dollar stadiums constructed for them on the public dole) continue to profit. How many stadiums have been built since then and at what cost? All the wealth that has been accumulated at that level is in my mind just as, if not more, offensive, since the owners act as if they were not enablers and co-dependents as their players shot up, ingested and otherwise partook in performance-enhancing drugs." -Adrian Burgos (author of Playing America's Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line)
"If Manny Ramirez is guilty of anything, it's being caught in between baseball's clubhouse culture and public sanctimony." -Dave Zirin (author of A People's History of Sports in the United States)
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