{"id":440,"date":"2008-05-31T08:51:06","date_gmt":"2008-05-31T07:51:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=440"},"modified":"2010-02-09T20:53:51","modified_gmt":"2010-02-09T20:53:51","slug":"foam-bats-and-kool-aid-bands-balco-and-bonds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=440","title":{"rendered":"Foam bats and Kool-Aid, Bands, Balco and Bonds"},"content":{"rendered":"

Written by Steve Bartley<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Before he was sent down the headline that made me reach for my foam baseball bat the quickest was that the gaunt and wobbly looking Pete Doherty, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcfront man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 to some band he formed after being expelled from his last, had been arrested on drug charges. <\/span><\/p>\n

After what must have been a weekly pardon by a magistrate Doherty would stumble out into daylight for the music press to touch the hem of his garment, leaving people like me wondering what it took to put someone famous behind bars – or into rehab, depending on your level of patience and\/or compassion. He was a great talent, people said, and that he just needed to sort himself out. Thwack-thwack went the bat against the wall.<\/span><\/p>\n

In between my last post and this, baseball\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own Doherty has popped up like a batting practice fly. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not the alleged extent to which Barry Bonds \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcroided-up\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 before trudging to the plate well past his career\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s cocktail hour, it was the endless flow of news about him that knocked my standards off kilter, causing me to yell more than I should at the TV or sports section.<\/span><\/p>\n

Allegation follows allegation, all pointing towards the same thing. But as was written in the Guardian <\/a>a few weeks ago, Bonds hasn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t actually been charged. What I say is let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s sort this out sooner rather than later. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m getting bored and more importantly the longer it goes on the more I assume the man is guilty. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m ready to rub his numbers from the books right now, and this can\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be good. I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not alone.<\/span><\/p>\n

Meanwhile Bonds is apparently unsure as to why he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not getting offered work in baseball, which is like Richard Nixon asking why he couldn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t get a political gig in the late seventies. To go near Bonds now is to put yourself in his camp, a camp which has a rusty gate held up by whitewash.<\/span><\/p>\n

So Bonds is in limbo, also known as perjury, with the highest participation sport in the US now his bashing. No charges for drug use, just perjury for lying that he had never knowingly taken them, something that will hardly be easy to prove. Congress may be homing in on it but Baseball still carries on as if the smoke emanating from Bonds is not fire, just the raw stench of summer. <\/span><\/p>\n

I once wrote to Bed Selig about this, telling him to come down on any player caught doping with the<\/em> power of hell\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s own fury<\/em> (my emphasis). He wrote back on very nice paper saying he agreed, but that sadly hell\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fury was not empowered to his office. <\/span><\/p>\n

That was four years ago now and can we really say there is no suspicion in the game? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s worse. It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s taken MLB years to do with drugs what The Libertines did in months with Doherty \u00e2\u20ac\u201c show a zero tolerance policy towards drugs. <\/span><\/p>\n

They probably didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t have proof their front man was screwing himself over in his free time and we don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know if Bonds did or didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t do anything we prude\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s frown upon. But even Barry must notice the list of athletes connected with Balco now charged or in prison. <\/span><\/p>\n

It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s time to either put Bonds on trial or let him go. Speed up the indictments, fast track the process \u00e2\u20ac\u201c for the sake of baseball. If he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s innocent \u00e2\u20ac\u201c terrific; they will name stadiums after him. If not then pass me the Kool-Aid and my foam bat. Take the kids into the other room. Dad has some yelling to do.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Written by Steve Bartley Before he was sent down the headline that made me reach for my foam baseball bat the quickest was that the gaunt and wobbly looking Pete Doherty, \u00e2\u20ac\u02dcfront man\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 to some band he formed after being expelled from his last, had been arrested on drug charges. After what must have been […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[553],"class_list":["post-440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb-2","tag-mlb-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=440"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6727,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440\/revisions\/6727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}