Black Box Report

Ugh. No more FISA-blogging. For a bit, anyway. I'm giving myself an ulcer. So let's try to accentuate the positive, and talk about the feel-good sports story of the summer!

Bloggers cannot live by politics alone. Some spice up their Washington coverage by blogging about their pets, orchids, new recipes, and, yes, even baseball. And when you have something as controversial as Barry Bonds and his record-breaking home run, well, let the punditry commence! The Moderate Voice is decidedly not moderate with their praise of Barry's accomplishment:

Mark Spitz's seven Olympic gold medals, Lance Armstrong's seven Tour de France victories and Wilt Chamberlain's 100-point game all were extraordinary, but don't compare.

The boys over at Sadly, No! agree - those things don't compare. Spitz, Armstrong and Chamberlain weren't on steroids. So they gave a suggestion
for Barry Bonds first post-record-breaking endorsement:

Now, Matthew Yglesias admits to not paying much attention to baseball...and then proceeds to make like Bob Costas and comes to the conclusion that Barry Bonds was simply the greatest offensive player in the history of baseball:

...it's silly for people to just shut their ears and pretend this didn't happen. Yes, it appears that during the period when Major League Baseball had no steroid policy, he took steroids. And the day when MLB invalidates all the other records from the Steroid Era -- rescinds the World Series titles and the division penants, takes back the Cy Young awards and the Golden Gloves, etc., etc., etc. -- I suppose it would make sense to take Bonds' achievements away too. But until that happens, the records are the records and he played better than anyone else.

Still, some people will always put an asterisk next to Bonds' name. (Which reminds me, you'd think Bush would've called him after the game ended. They have that * in common). But Captain's Quarters says the asterisk should belong to someone else:

But that's part of the problem with putting a big, fat asterisk on Bonds' record. We may want to do that to show the difference between Hank Aaron and Barry Bonds, but both played in different conditions. If Bonds bulked up, so did plenty of other players, including the pitchers he faced. It's the Steroids Era, and Bonds excelled in it.
.....
So who really deserves the asterisk? Peter Ueberroth, Fay Vincent, and Bud Selig. They did nothing while steroids flourished, because owners liked what it did to the game. It resulted in more homers, and more spectacular homers at that...The owners marketed on steroids and they depended on them just as much as the players who used them -- and these commissioners didn't lift a finger to stop it until Congress asserted what little authority it had to embarrass MLB. Only then did Selig start pushing against the Steroids Era.

For me, I'm on the fence. Would Bonds have broken Aaron's record without steroids? I doubt it. But there's also no denying that, steroids or not, Bonds is and always has been one to swing some pretty heavy lumber. And since he's stayed mostly healthy for a good part of his career, there's a pretty good chance that a steroid-free Bonds could've broken quite a few records on his own merits. But we'll never know. Mostly I'm just glad he's not in the AL East. But I'm a baseball fan. Not every blogger would say the same:

Barry Bonds has finally hit home run #756. Can we now please go back to ignoring him?

And now, back to your regularly schedujled political blogging.