BALCO legacy stymied Mitchell

Congratulations, Creamora, on becoming a junior member by writing all 500 posts on one topic. It's truly a magnificent feat.

 

Ragu says, "That isn't how most people feel." How do you know how most people feel? It's my opinion that the majority of people think this entire saga has been a waste of federal taxpayer dollars. Your opinion may not represent the overwhelming majority of people like you seem to think. I 've said it many times before. The tide is going to change when the appropriate time comes. It is about the subpoena power that now exists again. It's about cheating to win and the federal government has been cheating in ways that are more illegal than what some of the athletes involved were doing. Just because the evidence of investigative misconduct has not surfaced yet, does not mean that it doesn't exit. There are some very good reasons why the evidence of this has not been revealed thus far. It's best to wait until the entire story is told before making a judgement.

 

Ragu,

By the way, I just love reading your 1,000 word posts. Thanks for providing so much insightful information for the discussion.

 

I agree. Fabrication of information in police reports and false declarations filed with a federal court under penalty of perjury are pretty serious crimes. The evidence will come during direct examination of law enforcement officers in a federal court.

 

You can't plead the 5th when they offer you immunity.

 

As I've previously posted, the tide is going to change. Not all
journalists have blinders on and Sally Jenkins is one who doesn't.

And by the way, Jenkins is white.


Singling Out A Double Standard

By Sally Jenkins
Washington Post
Tuesday, December 18, 2007

The feds are going after all those asterisked pitchers and batters, aren't they? They're going to subpoena the Cy Youngs and most valuable players, and demand the return of the trophies and the money, right? They better. That, or show some leniency toward Marion Jones and Barry Bonds. Otherwise, it's going to beg an ugly question: Why are Jones and Bonds picking up the most expensive tab for performance enhancing? Why are they cheats and criminals, while others merely made "mistakes"?

Are prosecutors going to convene a grand jury, and call Roger Clemens (white man)? Will they pursue him across a half-decade until they force either perjury or a public confession from him? Are IRS investigators going to dog Kevin Brown (white man) and Chuck Knoblauch (white man) with the same Inspector Javert-like fervor? Will they audit bank accounts, grill confidants and lean on informants?

Will spectators and commentators have the same flaying, foam-flecked rage for Rick Ankiel (white man) and Andy Pettitte (white man)? Will we hear demands from (white) officialdom that their names be expunged forever from the books, that they be stripped of honors and bankrupted, reviled as the cheats of the century?

Why is it that our most severe penalties and public condemnations are reserved for Bonds (black man) and Jones (black woman)?

There's a nasty double standard here, and it can't be conveniently explained away. The rationalizations don't cut it.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/17/AR2007121702194.html

 

IF Bonds and Jones were indeed singled out just because of the amount of pigment in their skin, that is truly sad. I tend to think that it has nothing to do with skin color and hope that it doesn't. You think if all this stuff cranked up while McGwire still was active, he wouldn't have been thrown through the ringer? I think he would have been.

If the Clemens allegations are true, I hope he gets as much crap as Bonds has endured. The only difference at that point, in my opinion, is that Clemens is a hell of a lot more likable than Bonds. And, again, that has nothing to do with skin color.

 

For whatever reason, c, neither Clemens nor Pettitte was hauled before a grand-jury.
If they'd been, and lied, the indictments would be flying.
As for the court-of-public-outrage, I take Sally's point as valid.

 

Like I previously posted. The tide is changing and it will continue to change. Eugene Robinson is another smart journalist who gets it.


Fans on the Juice

By Eugene Robinson
Washington Post
Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Let's take a brief respite from politics to consider the elasticity of human potential:

On April 2, 2002, the Los Angeles Dodgers played a home game against the San Francisco Giants. In the top of the second inning, with two men on base, Dodgers ace Kevin Brown had to face slugger Barry Bonds. Brown blew his first pitch past the game's best hitter for a called strike. Bonds slammed Brown's second pitch over the left-center-field fence -- his first home run of the year, and number 568 in his storied career.

It is now assumed, of course, that Bonds may well have been juiced on steroids at the time; the previous year he had set the all-time single-season record of 73 home runs, and his musculature was almost freakishly swollen. But even the baseball fundamentalists who want to excise all of Bonds's suspect home runs from the hallowed record books should make an exception for number 568, right? Because we now have an allegation that Brown was juiced, too -- on human growth hormone and maybe steroids, as well.

If both pitcher and batter are artificially enhanced, doesn't that level the playing field?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/12/17/AR2007121701597.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

 

Talk about a level playing field in baseball is almost laughable considering that, without a salary cap, there never will be a level playing field when one Yankees player can make more than entire teams.

But I agree that we need to go after offending pitchers just as hard as offending hitters and that their records should be as tainted as Bonds' record is.