Nope.
In the Baseball Hall of Fame balloting announced today, those who elect baseball’s greats to its shrine of heroes failed to give anyone the requisite 75% ballots required for election. That’s too bad: Craig Biggio, Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines and Mike Piazza are deserving candidates.
The writers also did not elect unrepentant cheater, record thief and game-corrupter Barry Bonds, however, who was on only 36.2% of the ballots, slightly less than suspected steroid cheat Roger Clemens (37.6).
Buy a ticket, Barry.
A full complement of baseball’s steroid class is among the 37 players on the 2013 Hall of Fame ballot, so it was predictable that a new round of arguments would surface claiming that it is unfair, illogical, inconsistent or otherwise unseemly to exclude Barry Bonds and others from enshrinement. Predictable but frustrating: the arguments in favor of Bonds are arguments against maintaining ethical values, in baseball, sports, and American society. It is also an annoying debate to engage in, and I have been engaging in it in various forms for many years, because Bonds’ defenders typically represent themselves as modern, reasonable, and realistic, while anyone making the quaint argument that cheating on a grand scale should earn shame rather than honors is mocked as judgmental, sanctimonious and naïve. As ever, I am a glutton for punishment, and since otherwise wise and perceptive commentators like NBC Sports’ Craig Calcaterra choose to ally themselves with Bonds, I really am obligated to point out what a corrupt, illogical and unethical position it is. If I and people like me don’t persist in this, we’ll have cheating approved as a cultural norm before we know what hit us.
Calcaterra has been supporting Bonds as a Hall of Fame candidate for a while now, but the title of his latest essay, “It’s Lunacy To Keep Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens Out of the Hall of Fame” is a gauntlet that begs to be picked up. “Bonds and Clemens,” Craig writes, “ are two players who, in a just world, would be unanimous selections for induction…” I find this an indefensible, even shocking, statement, both before and after the writer attempts to defend it. In a just world, a member of a profession who achieved his prominence in part by breaking the law and the rules, as well as lying about it, should be accorded the highest honor that profession has! What an astounding point of view.
For simplicity’s sake, I’m going to leave Clemens out of this, in part because I can see a Hall of Fame voter credibly deciding that there isn’t enough evidence to conclude that The Rocket really did use performance enhancing drugs on the way to forging one of the top five pitching careers of all time, and in part because I suspect Craig of pairing Bonds and Clemens to make his various rationalizations more pallatable than they would be in defense of Bonds alone. Belief in Roger’s steroid cheating rests entirely on the testimony of a proven liar and slime-ball, his former trainer. MLB’s Mitchell Report sided with the trainer, and I’m inclined to as well, but Clemens’ unfitness for the Hall of Fame, unlike Bonds (and Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, and some others), is not an open-and-shut case.
I give credit to Craig for not raising my least favorite of the Bonds defenses, that he has to be regarded as innocent because he has not been “proven guilty.” Calcaterra is a lawyer, and he understands the over-use and misuse of that cliché, as well as how it only applies when “guilty” means “you’re going to jail.” Indeed, he begins by conceding the obvious, that the evidence that Barry Bonds used steroids is overwhelming, which it is.
His first argument, however, is terrible. Under the ironic heading “Baseball Bonafides,” Calcaterra begins by reciting Bonds’ (and Clemens’) impressive list of achievements, which taken at face value show Barry Bonds to be one the best of the best, not just a qualified Hall of Fame baseball player, but an epitome of a Hall of Fame player along with such legends as Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson , Ted Williams and Willie Mays. “Put simply,” Craig says in conclusion, Bonds is an “immortal.” But he’s not-–not if he cheated, not if he achieved his historic status by corrupting his sport and lying to team mates and fans. And, as Calcaterra admits at the outset, this he did. As a result, the fact that Bonds won a record seven Most Valuable Player Awards is irrelevant. He cheated to win some of those awards. He gets no credit for them. In Bonds’s case, “baseball bonafides” are not bona fide at all. Continue reading
The Lance Armstrong Fan Club writes to the US Anti-Doping Agency to protest its witch hunt.
Lance Armstrong has announced that he will no longer fight doping allegations, meaning that the Anti-US Doping Agency will effectively ban him from cycling and strip him of his titles. “If I thought for one moment that by participating in USADA’s process, I could confront these allegations in a fair setting and — once and for all — put these charges to rest, I would jump at the chance,” Armstrong said in a statement. “But I refuse to participate in a process that is so one-sided and unfair.”
It’s a shrewd move. Now Armstrong fans and admirers who refuse to acknowledge what is overwhelmingly likely bordering on certain—that he is a cheat, a liar and a fraud—can argue that poor Lance is a victim, and never was “proven guilty.” Of course, poor Lance has made millions of dollars and lived the life of a celebrity and hero for more than a decade, and he not going to forfeit any of that, or his freedom, no matter what rational people think of him. Like Barry Bonds, baseball’s most successful steroid cheat, he pulled it off, exploiting his sport, deceiving the public and taking advantage of a “look the other way” culture that corrupted bicycle racing even more thoroughly than steroids corrupted baseball. Continue reading
“OK, he got caught, but it doesn’t mean he isn’t still the BEST at Rubik’s Cube…”
I was interviewed on a radio news show early this morning, and one of the questions I was asked was whether what the host called “the decline of ethics in the country” could be reversed. I’m not convinced there has been such a decline, but if there is, it sure doesn’t help to have so many journalists with big microphones displaying infantile analysis of ethics-related issues on a regular basis.
Today’s case was USA Today sportswriter Bob Nightengale, who took the occasion of the annual induction of new members into baseball’s Hall of Fame in Cooperstown this weekend to trot out nearly every rationalization and ethical invalid argument imaginable to explain why he would be voting for all the proven or suspected steroid cheats for the Hall when their time comes:
“There, I said it. I will vote for Bonds. And Clemens. And Sosa. And Piazza. I’ll think about Bagwell. And will continue voting for Rafael Palmeiro, who tested positive in his final season when he reached 3,000 hits.”
And then come the rationalizations:
Don’t worry, Barry; Lance should be joining you soon.
Well, I guess I have to hand it to Lance Armstrong, a bit like Ozzie Guillen when he praised Fidel Castro for surviving his dictatorship against all odds. The evidence, circumstantial and otherwise, that Armstrong is a prohibited drug cheater ( like most successful cyclists) has been mounting for over a decade, and yet he has managed to hold on to much of his prestige and iconic status. Meanwhile, retired baseball slugger Barry Bonds has been reviled, condemned, prosecuted and vilified, by me among many others, for presumed illicit performing enhancing drug use in his sport that is backed by very similar kinds of evidence that incriminate Armstrong. Yet while Bonds faces the humiliation of being rejected for election to baseball’s Hall of Fame next year when he becomes eligible, despite being the sport’s all-time career home run leader, Armstrong was preparing to race again to cheering throngs in an upcoming iron man triathlon.
Then came the news, yesterday, that the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency has brought formal doping charges against him. No one should underestimate Armstrong’s skill in wiggling off the hook, but this really should settle the issue of whether he is a hero or a manipulative charlatan. He is the latter. Whether he was a good but weak man trapped in a lie, or a sociopathic con man and cheat can be investigated by biographers and sportswriter, and psychologists. The harm that will be done when his false heroism is irrefutably exposed, however, will be the same no matter how Armstrong came about causing it. His sport will be permanently tarnished beyond recovery. Scores of children and teens will be disillusioned, betrayed into a cynicism about role models and human nature that should only descend later in life. Worst of all,. his example will stand for some as proof that cheating pays. Armstrong, whatever happens to him, will be rich, like Barry Bonds, even if he is disgraced. He will, as my father liked to say, cry all the way to the bank. Continue reading
Unforgivable?*
Bleacher Reports is an enjoyable sports website, and it gives opportunities to aspiring writers and bloggers, some of whom are quite talented. In addition to typical opinion pieces and reporting, the site has a fondness for lists, often trivial to the extreme, like “The 50 Ugliest Athletes of All Time.” The titles are all misnomers, because there is almost never any criteria given for the choices or their relative ranking. An accurate title would be, “The Fifty Athletes I Think Are The Ugliest.” And of course, who cares? (Don Mossi, by the way, was the ugliest athlete ever, no matter what anybody says.)
A recent list, however did bother me. It is called “The Fifty Most Unforgivable Acts in Baseball History,“ and much of the problem with it lies in the title itself. If you are going to write about history, there is a duty perform diligent research, even for a silly online list. Misrepresentations online have a large probability of misleading people. The title is a misrepresentation, like “The 50 Ugliest Athletes,” but unlike that list, there is some harm done. The list isn’t close to complete; it isn’t consistent; it isn’t well-researched. I’d bet that the author, Robert Knapel, wrote it off the top of his head. Anyone who looked at the list and assumed, as the author represents, that these are truly the low points—“the dark side,” as the author puts it—of major league baseball would be seriously misinformed.
There are unequivocally, probably universally recognized incidents and events that are infinitely worse that most of the items on the list. Just a few samples: Continue reading
Sorry, Lance…good guys don’t cheat.
Back when Barry Bonds was still playing baseball, a sportswriter mused about why it was that everyone assumed Bonds was a performance-enhancing drug cheater despite his protestations to the contrary, while most Americans and sports journalists brushed away similar allegations regarding Lance Armstrong. Both competed in sports with acknowledged steroid abuse problems; indeed, the problem in bicycle racing was presumed to be more pervasive than in baseball. (A few years later, with the banning of multiple Tour winners, the presumption became a certainty.) Both athletes had improbable late career improvements in their performance to reach previously unimaginable dominance in their respective sports. Both had to explain or deflect multiple credible accusations of cheating and circumstantial evidence that suggested that they were doping. Both claimed they had never failed drug tests, and there were good reasons to doubt the denials.
So why was Bonds a villain by consensus and Lance an untouchable hero? The sportswriter explored many theories (Apologies: I cannot locate the article. If someone can, please send it), among them the greater popularity of baseball over cycling, Bond’s startling physical transformation into a behemoth while Armstrong remained cyclist-sinewy, Armstrong’s inspiring story as a cancer survivor, Armstrong’s philanthropic work,and the fact that Bonds, unlike Armstrong, was black. The biggest difference, however, and to the writer the key one, was that Armstrong acted the role of a hero, while Bonds refused to. Armstrong was friendly and accommodating, while Bonds was angry, intimidating and antagonistic. Armstrong seemed like someone who played by the rules, and who lived his ethical values. Bonds seemed like a rebel, one who wouldn’t hesitate to break the rules for his own benefit. In short, the public wanted Armstrong to be the hero he seemed to be, so they ignored the evidence linking him to performance-enhancing drugs.
After last Sunday, the disparate public perception of Bonds and Armstrong, always illogical, became unsustainable. Continue reading
I never thought it could happen.
The four words above rank near the top of my list of “Things I Will Never Think, Feel, or Write,” somewhere between “I love the New York Yankees” and “I’m skipping the ethics seminar because I don’t want to miss the finale of “Dancing With The Stars.”
Former San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds has arranged to pay the college tuition for the children of Bryan Stow, the San Francisco Giants fan who was beaten into a coma outside Dodger Stadium on Opening Day. Both of his children are currently in grade school. By the time they are ready for college, it is estimated that the average tuition will be only slightly less than the national debt.
Barry can afford it, of course, but that is irrelevant. There is no way to spin this into anything but a profoundly kind and generous act of compassion toward a stranger. Bonds did not announce the pledge, or send out a press release. It was not an effort to bolster his public image in the wake of his recent conviction for misleading a federal grand jury regarding his use of steroids. He was not trying to change anyone’s opinion of his baseball controversies, and it is unlikely to. Bonds was just doing something extraordinarily generous, for a man and a family who have been struck by a terrible and senseless tragedy. Stow family attorney Thomas Girardi revealed yesterday that Bonds made the pledge to Stow’s son and daughter after visiting the family in the hospital on April 22. Bonds has said nothing about it.
I have been very critical of Barry Bonds’ conduct for many years, and there is much to criticize. None of that should reduce the praise and admiration due to him for this extraordinary act. Barry Bonds is an Ethics Hero. That’s all there is to it.
What happened on “Dancing With The Stars” last night?
It took about an hour after the Barry Bonds verdict for the first ethics-challenged national sports writer to write something outrageous about it. Not surprisingly, it was Buzz Bissinger, a the member in good standing of the Daily Beast’s stable of annoyingly hypocritical, biased or appallingly cynical writers, Bissinger belonging to the last category.
His post, which pronounced the Barry Bonds conviction “a travesty” in the title, contained one ethics howler after another, any of one of which would have justified an Ethics Dunce prize.
Here they are:
“It is true that the case of Barry Bonds does hit a new low, a new low in the waste of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money, a new low in the witch hunt of a player who, because he was considered surly and arrogant and unlikable, is now having intimate details of his life revealed (such as testicle shrinkage), a new low in outrageous abuse of government power.” Continue reading
The results of the Barry Bonds trial, which today concluded with the jury finding baseball’s all-time home run champion guilty of obstructing justice by misleading a grand jury investigating the distribution of illegal and banned steroid to professional athletes but unable to agree on the perjury charges, helps to balance the ethical scales. It should silence the shameless Bonds defenders who misused the “innocent until proven guilty” standard to maintain poor Bonds was being unfairly suspected of inflating his biceps, head, statistics and income through the marvels of chemistry, though it was blatant and obvious in dozens of ways. Now he has been proven guilty—not of everything, but for celebrity justice, in a trial where much of the most damaging evidence was withheld from the jury, enough—, so the claims of racism and unfair prosecution will ring even hollower now. Continue reading
Ethics Alarms 