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Giambi confesses to Grand Jury about steroid use (http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,140245,00.html)

And he got them from, that's right, BARRY BOND'S trainer.

But Bonds never did steroids...not once.

Shocking!!!

Why anyone is surprised at this has me baffled...

Yes, we all know that men typically do not get stronger as they age into their 30's. Yet, we're going to act surprised to find out they lied about taking steroids?

The shocking part is that he is so stupid to give confessions to a grand jury about it, and then bald-faced lie to the press about taking them not two months after the fact. The cat was already out of the bag, you might as well start coming clean. It's just another Clinton-like scenario that the public wants to be clear instead of the obvious lies.

Can we please just get these fuckheads out of the league?

What I want to know is how the paper got hold of his grand jury testimony. I mean, if he thought the testimony would be public, why lie in the press about it? Come clean, and maybe you only get suspended. Try to cover it up, maybe you get the Pete Rose treatment.

Either way, Giambi's a fucking idiot for injecting stuff into his stomach and buttocks. Hmmm, intestinal tumor... injections of steroids in the stomach? Correlation?

Giambi's an ass for a) knowingly violating the rules of his league and b) repeatedly lying about it, and I won't lose any sleep over him.

But I don't get the outrage over the juice.  It's just something you take, or inject, or apparently rub on your ass (and doesn't that conjure nice imagery) that aids you in getting stronger.  Kind of like protein shakes or vitamin C, or just working out for 3 hours a day.  

We have categorized a certain class of these supplements as bad, not because they're 'unfair', but because they're dangerous.  If HGH wasn't categorized as dangerous, people wouldn't complain if Giambi took it.  They'd expect him to.  And bitch him out if he didn't.  But people aren't complaining that Giambi's threatening his own health.  We expect athletes to threaten their own health for us.  They do it daily.  People complain that it ruins the integrity of the game by making them too strong.  That's stupid.  If that's your argument, ban exercise.  Ban protein shakes.  Limit weight training to 2 hours a week.   Babe Ruth didn't have a personal trainer, a nutritional expert, and 20 pounds of supplements a day.  Guess what, the integrity of the game is permanently ruined by that standard, and will continue to be ruined.  

The steroids kerfluffle is understandable in the sense that you're going after people who are cheating, and know they're cheating.  But on the merits, it's silly.

First off, kerfluffle? Did you pick that up out of the Hello Kitty dictionary? I think you need to be claymation to say shit like that.

Second, you are correct, I don't care about Giambi's health or anyone else's health who uses steroids. I care that it's opening the gateway you are talking about to where athletes are forced to do something incredibly dangerous and stupid to stay competative. Comparing it to lifting weights is assanine and you know it. Work ethic towards the game and taking illegal performance substances don't relate.

I just miss the days where perfect games and multi-home run games were the product of hangovers rather than intensive workout regiments. That's why David Wells owns.

I hate steroids in baseball or any sport because only some are using it. Either force them all to use it or force them all to not use it. I don't care what level the playing field is at as long as it IS level.

But getting to the quote at hand, I am sick and tired of secret testimony getting leaked. Any person found leaking information like this should go to Federal Pound-You-In-The-Ass Prison.

Very true.  On the other hand this kind of shit is more entertaining than I've ever found the actual sport of baseball to be.

Complaining about athletes using steroids to enhance their entertainment value is like complaining about actresses for getting facelifts and boob-jobs.  It's their body.  If they want to fuck it up, isn't that their right?  

I realize that the issue here is one more of breaking the rules.  Yes, steroid use is against MLB rules and does taint the integrity of the sport.  In my opinion, the source of the roids is irrelevant if Bonds himself has continued to test clean.  Seems like more media hype than anything else.

That's why I love the NFL; everyone is on a level, albiet chemically-enhanced, playing field.

I have no problem if everyone was on steroids. I don't like SOME being on and some not. That isn't fair. I would like to see every hitter hit 80 home runs and every pitcher knock a batter's head off on a wild pitch.

Mutant league baseball will some day be a reality. Pile on the juice!

Or no-hitters spawned from taking LSD and not realizing you had to pitch that day.

Dock Ellis (http://www.baseballreliquary.org/ellis.htm) is the only one who knows whether he was telling the truth, but Snopes (http://www.snopes.com/sports/baseball/ellis.asp) says it's true, FWIW.

If I gave a shit about baseball I'd insert a rant about retracting all of Barry Bonds' records here.

The only thing I suppose I really care about is those who have come before him and done it clean, ie previous record holders and such (-not mark and sammy-), as well as the players who are indeed clean and really don't need to be forced into that crap.

However, if you look closely, one flaming fuck of a lot more than 5% of MLB players are on steroids.

And yes it was obviously both of these idiots were on steroids. Who cares. Kick them out and retract any records they've made. That'd be a clear enough message to not use them, and those that have may just cut their losses and stop. Magically Roger Clemens would retire again.

The only thing worse than Barry Bonds is the reporters who follow him. Espcially the ESPN BBTN crew. This is the same crew that went on and on about steriods and cheating and Bonds etc before the season but as soon as he starts breaking more records (aka 700 HR) they are the ones practically felating him on national TV with special shows etc.

Fuck you ESPN, espcially John Kruk you fat moronic shithead. Only thing you injected in your arse was turkey lard. Probably your head too.

And fuck the people who like to claim that Bonds is 'innocent till proven guilty'. Get your fucking heads out of your pitutairy glands (haha Giambi hows that tumor treating you.), if it looks like shit, and smells like shit and tastes like shit then you deserve to have it rammed down your throats you moronic toss bags.

Bud Selig should come out tommorow and ban Giambi and Bonds from baseball for life, but he won't. Can we make David Stern the commisioner?


ps Hey Georgey hows that 100mil contract for Giambi looking right now?

Banning Bond's would be moronic. Unfortunately, he really is innocent until proven guilty.

Athletes today can perform better into later years. That isn't all steroids. You can't ban people because they got better and bigger minus real evidence of wrongdoing.

It seems like the Yankees might contest Giamib's contract because of the steroid use since the illness that caused him to miss time was drug related. Here is hoping. Fuck that guy.

But what does this have to do with hockey?

Do I even bother?

Not to protect him (he is an ass, and deserves to be punished for using steroids, if proven), but in Bonds defense, all steroids do is turn your doubles into triples, and triples into home runs.  As it is, Bonds is probably one of the greatest batters to ever play the game.  He has godly plate discipline, and doesn't swing at anything unless its fair.  Steroids didn't make him this way.

Thats what I like about baseball, its more skill based than most of the other major sports, which are more based on brute athleticism.  You can have all the strength in the world, but if you can't hit a baseball (one of the hardest things to do in all sports), your fucked (Adam Dunn.....).

Dammit, Baseball needs to start up again.  I need to see if I can lead my fantasy team to its 3rd concecutive 4th place finish in the Waterthread leauge.  By the way, good job to everybody who was in the leauge this year.  I slacked off and forgot to post at the end, but that was a great season and I had a great time playing against you all.  Alas, my team again couldn't keep dominating and fell apart at the end like last year.

Mission: Not Last Place This Year will definitely return under a new name!

Mission: Not Last Place This Year; This Time We Won't Draft Jose Contreras

If I had to bet I would certainly bet that Bonds used steroids, but you can't ban someone for that. And yes, Bonds is great regardless. His plate discpline is just amazing. The guy just knows how to put the bat on the ball way way better than anyone else.

Amen.  They all fucking piss me off.

Oh, and then there's Barry. (http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylc=X3oDMTBpa2lpNnFzBF9TAzk1ODYxNzc3BHNlYwN0bQ--?slug=ap-giants-bonds-steroids&prov=ap&type=lgns)

If it wasn't for his association with BALCO (and his now-released testimony) I would have believed that Bonds was not on the juice.  He has always been a great athelete, but only started serious weight training later in life.  He is not unreasonably large for a person who does that.  Baseball players used to refrain from weight training because it was believed that bulk slowed your bat speed.  I think it was Wilbon who pointed out that Bonds has a frame similar to Brett Farre's and actually weighs less.

Yay, Bonds uses steroids. Let the waffling begin... NOW.

I love Bonds's testimony. It smacks of him being an ABSOLUTE PRICK.



Yes, because it's not like they'd want to protect the health of someone they invested MULTIPLE MILLIONS OF DOLLARS AND YEARS OF EFFORT ON. It's not like they aren't MARKETING YOU AS THE FACE OF THE FUCKING TEAM. Oh, but their doctors will lie about something. Yeah, spin me another one, you cockmuncher.

But this one:



I'm black, it's my money, so charity is right the fuck out. All you other bitches out there, because I'm black, I don't owe you a fucking cent.

Way to not sound like a motherfucking racist prick. If a white man had said, "I'm white and I'm keeping my money" you'd have been on him as a bigot faster than a 3-0 pitch down the fucking pipe.

Cock.

When he supposedly asked Anderson what the substance was, Anderson supposedly said "flaxseed oil" to which Bonds claimed he replied, "Whatever."

Situation: You are a MULTI-MILLION DOLLAR athelete. You make money off of your physical condition. And you're going to tell me that you will knowingly put something on your body, the thing which makes you all that cheese, without really giving a shit what it is? Seriously, you want me to believe that? That's like me being paid to write and not looking down at my keyboard to see if someone has secretly replaced it with a bowl of man-eating pirahanas. I mean, does ANYONE believe he wouldn't know what he was putting in or on his body?

Hey, MLB... ban him, plzkthx. I know they won't, and I'm quite sure the cocksuckers in the Union will be all up in arms when Giambi gets shitcanned from his contract. But fuck you, Gene Orza, fuck you, Donald Fehr and fuck you, Bud Selig for letting such shit go off in front of your faces and doing fuckall about it.

Too be fair, if I was a player I would not trust the MLB further than I could throw it.  Even a team doctor.  Not only because of the "yeah you can play kiddo...oops sorry about that career ender" crap they often pull (though on scrubs, not Bonds-types usually), but I seem to recall that before the steroid testing the MLB did a couple years ago to see if use was widespread, the MLB swore up and down on a pile of Bibles that the test would be completely anonymous and no sample could be traced to any player.  Whoopsie

That said, Bonds is a prick no doubt.  I have to admit that I have always had a soft spot in my heart for him, though.  He spent most of his career as an underappreciated genius, and I like his steadfast refusal to do the standard trained monkey act most atheletes put on to get endorsement money.

I think you guys are forgetting something fundamental.

Baseball = entertainment.  Bonds = $$$ for baseball.

Bonds wasn't hired by MLB to be a spokesman, a role model, or a stand-up guy.  He was hired to a) hit little white balls with a wooden bat and b) put fans asses in seats.  I'd say that the guy has done his job.  If people don't like what Bonds and others are doing, there's an easy solution: don't support MLB.  Parents: tell your kids that there are better rolemodels than athletes/entertainers.

As for the steroid shit, it's largely a biproduct of the hiring/firing process in sport coupled to the insane demands of the fans.  I played major college football and can tell you that the pressure to use anything that will enhance performance is huge.  Pressure from teammates, pressure from fans, and unspoken pressure from coaches (i.e. don't perform well, sit your ass on the pines).  Couple this to the lack of emotional maturity in most athletes and the willingness of people outside sport to exploit their success and you have a recipe for disaster.  

Taking steroids is bad.  Taking steroids is against the rules.  Let's not get carried away with the whole issue... it's not punching a fan or choking your coach.  In the end, most habitual steroid users will pay the price anyway... Look at Lyle Alzado.

I don't think taking steroids was actually against the rules in baseball until a year or two ago.

"First off, I'm black..."

Any sentence that starts like that is bound to be a winner in the logic department. Hey, no shit Barry? I thought it was a tan.

Here's a thought Barry. You do owe society something you juiced-up ape. Contrary to the beliefs of the NBA, being black doesn't entitle you to give the world the middle finger and still expect to be respected. You had the chance to be an AWESOME role model to young black kids all over the world, and you fucking blew it. I hate you more for that than anything else you've done. I hope you grow man boobs.

It wasn't, and that's part of the problem. Hell, Mark McGwire during his home run season had adrenodine in his locker and reporters saw it. That didn't go on the banned by MLB list until 2003. 200-Fucking-3. MLB and the Players Union have both been turning a blind eye to the whole thing for at least 5 years and longer. It's only when they get black eyes from guys like Canseco and Caminiti that they start doing something about it.

MLB CANNOT CLAIM TO BE ENTERTAINMENT. Legally speaking, they are a sport; because they are a sport and not considered by law to be an entertainment company, they can get away with some monopolistic practices without being busted by the antitrust police, which includes the manner in which they negotiate with the players and the players' union. Ask the WWF/WWE; they tried to claim they were a sport in order to get away with some things. Of course, they had to drop that for some kind of tax reasons and claim to be "sports entertainment."

Baseball does not want to start taking business lessons from the WWE.

Let's be honest a second.  Does anyone really think that steroids and their cousins are not utterly rampant in the NFL?  If I'm a sports league, the NFL is the place I take my business lessons from.

Well, that and the point that their matches are not, in fact, legitimate athletic competitions.

Bring the noise.
Cheers............

This is an issue of semantics and compartmentalization for legality's sake.  People watch sports to be entertained.  Sports ARE entertainment.  Sports are just a different type of entertainment than say the WWE, Monster Truck Rallies, the ballet, or Broadway.  I agree that we need to regulate each form of entertainment differently.  Each form has its unique aspects and the performers require different types of legal representation.  

What is obvious is that most people try to make sports more than what they really are.  It's a game... we watch it for entertainment.  When people fail to be entertained, the sport starts to suffer (*cough* NHL *cough*).  The fact that sports aren't scripted makes them the "freeform jazz" of human endeavors, but it still remains entertainment.

Which is what McMahon was claiming they were, right up until he realized the tax liabilities he would be owing because of that. At which point he said, "You know, wrestling really IS fake."

As for leaking the grand jury testimony, I've tried to google up something on this, and haven't so far come up with any sort of idea of what penalties the Chronicle could face for printing information from leaked, sealed documents. They CAN be made to testify before a grand jury that was attempting to indite the person who did leak them, but from what I can find, they cannot be punished for actually printing it UNLESS the stuff they printed was incorrect and caused damage to a person because of it (libel, as opposed to slander, which is spoken).

I'm not sure that's quite the way I'd like it to be, because it just feels wrong to KNOWINGLY print something that is supposed to be sealed by the court of law. But at the same time, I'm also not sure I'd want some form of prohibition on the press that punished them for printing things that government officials want kept quiet, such as say Nixon's stupidity.

I can't really get upset over the paper printing it because they are newspapers. My problem is with the person who leaked it to the paper. Find them and flay them.

My biggest problem with the paper printing it is that it seems they have no problem with aiding and abetting a crime if it sells more papers. Not to mention it makes people distrust the whole "Your grand jury testimony is confidential" thing, making people more hesitant to testify truthfully before a grand jury.

Once confidentiality is broken, it's broken. At that point it doesn't matter if you try to supress the information, or make sure every citizen has it ingrained permanently in their brain Clockwork Orange-style.

Not that they aren't complicit, just that their actions merely speed up the inevitable process of everyone who wants to know finding out.

The leak is the problem, the papers just amplify it.

Bring the noise.
Cheers..............

No because, tada, the NFL actually has a drug testing policy that isn't as flimsy as Tara Reid's morals (hello MLB).

You honestly think people in the NFL aren't on steroids? C'mon, a lot of *high school* football players are on steroids even. Steroids are ahead of the testing curve, there are plenty of steroids that typical tests don't detect.

I would expect football to have the highest rate of steroid use, by far.

and you also thought Barry BOnds is innocent. Wanna buy a bridge?

Um, I *thought* Barry Bonds did steroids, I just wouldn't ban him without actual evidence. See the difference?

If I had to bet money, I would have bet Bonds and Giambi did steroids. That doesn't make them guilty.

It was pretty obvious that Giambi was on steroids. His body began breaking down, he had a tumor in his pituitary gland (common with steroid use), he suddenly got thinner, etc etc. If I had 100 bucks I'd wager he did 'roids. But, as commissioner of baseball I wouldn't ban him for that without evidence first.

Are you going to ban Griffey Jr? He has a lot of obvious steroid abuse symptoms as well. Sosa? If you ban 10 guys without evidence and were right on 9 of them you've made a huge mistake.

Banning people requires a higher standard of evidence. That is all I am saying.

See this is where I disagree with you. Finding conclusive evidence of steroid use, as you put it, is very difficult with the fact that many of the roids are beyond conventional drug testing. I'd be willing to take a more circumstantial approach to really putting these 10 fictional guys through the ringer. I'm not saying just arbitrarily ban them, but run them through the battery of investigations. After that, I'd be happy with getting 9 out of 10 of them.

BALCO was experimenting with variations that didn't show under current tests.  It's to be expected Bonds tested clean under what are arguably the loosest tests/policy in commercial sports.

Every business has people who go to any measures to "win".  Bonds is no different than any other backstabbing pill-popping executive willing to throw friends under the bus (http://www.stockselector.com/newsarticle.asp?symbol=DCQ&article=61638099).

The NFL's performance enhancing drug testing policy is a joke unless you are a complete moron.  Bonds is an amazing natural athelete, works out religiously, and took steroids.  There are hundreds of people in the NFL who are bigger and faster than Bonds.  There are hundreds of people who are bigger and faster than Bonds who would lick a NFL general manager's boots clean for a roster slot as a kick coverage guy.  

If you think the NFL is clean, you shouldn't be making bridge-buying cracks about anyone.

The problem, as it stands is that the notion of "better to let 10 guilty men go free than to convict 1 innocent" is that letting 10 guilty men goes free means you will continue to have cheaters in the game. Moreover, it sends the all-too-common message that 'it's only wrong if you get caught'.

Nobody wants the game tainted by cheaters, yet nobody wants the accused to suffer what they deem as injustice, complete with due process & presumed innocence.

At some point, something's got to give. Either the default is that some measure of cheating will be knowingly allowed to exist, or it is that you'll run the risk of banning some innocent players in your efforts to protect the integrity of the game.

There's an interesting parallel to MMOGs in this one.

Bring the noise.
Cheers..............

Given the current system for major league baseball and how it was at the time of the offense there really is not much that they can do to bonds or the others. Even if they choose to take it to the next step they will lose because at the time of the offenses there was no stipulated penalty phase for failing a test.

Basically all they could say is oooo you used steriods you are a bad bad boy and slap him on the wrist.


kaid

Baseball STILL has no policy in place banning the use of HGH or Human Growth Hormone. At the time of the offenses, the shit Bonds and Giambi were doing wasn't illegal.

Mark Schlereth (sic - otherwise known as Stink) on ESPN and ESPN Radio described what the NFL was doing when he was playing a few years ago. At the beginning of training camp, they'd have to take a drug/steroids test. Randomly during the season, you'd get a note in your locker informing you today was your day to test again. During the OFFSEASON, you'd get a random call saying that some guys were coming over the next day at 10 am to get your sample. And to give your sample, you had to have a doctor IN THE ROOM when you produced it, watching you. So he actually had to look at your junk when you gave it.

Sure, NFL players are on steroids. But according to him, it's going to be hard as hell to get away with it.

If it was me, I'd hope they had the afternoon off, cause that sounds like a wicked condition for stage fright.