****OFFICIAL BONDS USED STEROIDS THREAD*********

[Jack of Arcades]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I'm not excusing what Bonds did or anything, but let's be honest here, Bonds is nowhere near unique in the history of baseball. Players have been cheating and lying as long as the game has been around.

[/ QUOTE ]

Sure, but there were only a handful that were eligible to be both:

A) At the top echelon of the baseball pantheon
B) Accessible to non-legal performance-enhancing methods.

Do people keep forgetting that Bonds is on the verge of passing BABE RUTH for 2nd on the all-time HR list? That is the difference between him and...Alex Sanchez.

[/ QUOTE ]

Willie Mays, Joe Dimaggio, Mickey Mantle, etc, etc, all took Amphetamines. These are definitely "non-legal performances-enhancing methods," and baseball agrees as they recently started testing for them...

[/ QUOTE ]

I would argue that many today are still taking amphetamines (somebody recently said that upwards of 90% of current players are taking them). Bonds went above and beyond that.

It's like saying Person A shouldn't get a speeding ticket for going 120 in a 55mph zone cuz "lots of people go 65".

Josh

[/ QUOTE ]

To use your anaology, people are saying speeding is a recent phenomenon, villifying the recent drivers, and canonizing everyone that drove before them.

I'm in no way condoning this, but trying to put this into perspective. If steroids were available to this magnitude fifty years ago, we'd have had the same problem with them with some of the most famous names in history.