Another Bonds Rant

I was just looking at the ESPN website and came upon a story regarding what could be worse than Bonds chase of history with the help of roids and I felt sick to my stomach after reading it. Has ESPN become the PR outlet for Barry Bonds? After reading this article, am I supposed to feel that it is ok Bonds will break the record on roids. The author (who I believe is trying to promote his book about Tris Speaker) states a few reasons why Bonds "isn't that bad" of a guy.

The first reason was the black sox scandal of 1919. While this was horrible for baseball, it was just for a series whereas Bonds' juicing affected his statistics for 5 years. He brings up the fact that many of the early WS might have been marred by gambling induced chicanery. This doesn't have to with a player's career just one or two games that were fixed.

He also brings up when Speaker threw a game in the 1912 WS. And mentions that Speaker and Ty Cobb were accused of fixing the game.

This article clearly does not parallel to the Bonds situation at all. Bonds is accused of enhancing his performance throughout his career, affecting the outcome of his overall stats not just one series or one game. The fixing of games in the early 20th century just affected those games. To say that baseball was much worse back in the day is ignorning the problem at hand with Bonds.

If the author wants to point out that baseball has a problematic past then maybe he should point out the instances where Ty Cobb ran up into the stands and beat people up, the death threats that Hank Aaron received, and the fact that many African Americans had to disguise themselves as American Indians to play in the early years. I believe these problematic instances show that baseball hasn't been all that great. Not excerpts from "Tris Speaker: The Rough and Tumble Life of a Baseball Legend".