Ummm....Not for 8 seasons at the stadium several miles away

Baseball Tonight: Covering the highlights of the Padres-Giants game, Barry's last in San Francisco.

"Boats out in McCovey Cove, and boy did they become a familar sight over the 15 years Bonds spent in San Francisco."

Even more remarkable since more than half those seasons were played at Candlestick. And steroids or no steroids, you'd really have to whack the hell out of the ball to A) clear the upperdeck, and B) clear the parking lot to get to San Francisco Bay.


Sorry. Little things like that bother me.

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Read this entire post, or you'll have made me waste the last twenty minutes

Obama invite Bonds? Probably

Tribune
August 9, 2007

Asked at a news conference in Oakland on Wednesday whether he would invite Barry Bonds to the White House if he were president, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said he "probably would."

"It's a remarkable achievement," Obama said. "And he deserves, I think, our congratulations. I remain concerned about the cloud that exists not just in baseball but in everything from basketball to the Tour de France. I mean you just get a sense right now that sports is suffering from a crisis of confidence and my hope is that all the various sports leagues take those responsibilities seriously. I left out Michael Vick and what's happening in the National Football League.

"So you basically have every single sport suffering from some major questions."

Asked how he would have combated the growing steroid problem over the past decade were he president, Obama responded, "First of all, I would not have entered into an illegal war based on false pretenses," to which the crowd responded with a thunderous ovation. "But when I'm president, if we have actual information about big time athletes using steroids, and if Commissioner Selig won't act, I will."

Obama then further detailed his plans to address improprieties in professional sports were he elected president.

"If that means having federal agents storm Tim Donaghy's house with helicopters and tear gas, we will do that," Obama said. "If it means sticking a catheter in Floyd Landis's urethra while he sleeps to draw a urine sample, we will do that too. Or if it means dipping Michael Vick in corned beef hash and tossing him to a pack of starving pitbulls, we can do that also."

After several audience members chuckled in response to the latter comment, Obama added, "No, for real. Thanks to laws passed since 9/11, that's actually legal, and I would gladly do it."

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Damn it, Barry Bonds is Great. That's right! He is GREAT!

August 7th, 2007 is a day that no one wanted to see...at least according to ESPN (most actual polls show that less than 50% of fans did not want to see Barry break the record). Well let me quote Bonds himself: "This record is not tainted...at all. Period."

FUCKING PERIOD! You're damn right, Barry.

Okay, let's get this out of the way right now (I'm drunk...wait, that's beside the point) I was originally against Barry Bonds, as recently as a year ago, and probably more recently than that. So if you want to go through the trouble of digging up my old posts that bashed Bonds and call me a hypocrite, you're too late. I'm admitting to every word of my previous protests.

But I can admit when I was wrong, and pure logic and reason has proven all of my previous opinions wrong.

Am I saying that Bonds is innocent of steroid use? Hell no. I'm just as convinced as the next guy that Barry Bonds used steroids and that it most definitely aided him in hitting 756.

But let's get one thing straight, right here and right now. Barry Bonds is a great
hitter. He is a great home run hitter. He is certainly the best home run hitter of our time, and can easily be argued to be the greatest home run hitter of all time.

So here are a few simple reasons why you cannot put an asterisk on Barry's record (not to mention Vinnie's post, seen below, which is hilarious and makes a great point).

Different Eras. Different stars.

You could argue that Babe Ruth's home runs were harder to come by, since he played in an era where pitchers threw from higher mounds, and hitters like Babe Ruth spent their "off-season" getting hammered. On the other hand, you could just as easily argue that Hank Aaron's home runs were even more impressive since he played against a more diversified (and thus more talented) field than Babe Ruth. Imagine taking Pedro, Zambrano and Mo Rivera out of the picture, just to mention a few, and see how that would affect the game?

The same goes for this new era. Whether players use illegal performance enhancers or not (and I'm betting that most of them do) they certainly are using legal performance enhancers and training routines that were not available to players in Aaron's era. Not to mention the addition of specialty pitching and body armor.

The point is that in any given era has its advantages for pitchers and advantages for hitters, so if you want to use selective changes (like steroids) you can "prove" that one era was tougher to hit home runs in than another.

Since comparing eras is impossible and a complete waste of time, we can only accurately compare superstars to other superstars in their era. This leads me to the second reason why no asterisk is needed for 756.

Respect how long the record was held

This argument has been made many times, and ignored just as often. So here it is once more.

Barry Bonds took the record from Hank Aaron, who has been holding on to 755 for 31 years. Hank Aaron took it from Babe Ruth, who held 714 for 39 years. Babe Ruth took it from Roger Conner, who held 138 for 24 years.

Alex Rodriguez will likely (though it is most certainly not as definite as people like to think it is) take the home run record in about a decade.

The stance a lot of people have taken is, "Don't worry, A-Rod will take the record back soon."

But why aren't we questioning A-Rod's ascent to the hallowed mark? I'm not accusing him of drug use, but he certainly has advantages that Hank Aaron did not, and yet...no protest.

This is the new era, for better or worse (I personally think better), where drugs, illegal and legal, play a huge role in our sports. Medicine and health in general play a much larger role in our athletes' lives. There are no more players who drink a bottle of Yukon Jack on a Tuesday night and hit two home runs in the Wednesday day game. Those days are gone, so quit trying to hang on to them.

We are in the days of 24-7 training, and yes performance enhancers, and for the time being, Barry Bonds has proved himself to be the best player of this era. And that deserves some respect.

So get off your fucking high horse and appluad the man for breaking a great record.

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YCS Book Launch (Preview!)

It finally happened. The end. Of decency. Of hope. Forever. Doom. Gloom. Death. BB756, 8/7/07. Add it up and multiply it by stuff--you'll get 666.

Well I could get angry. I could get mad. I could get upset. But I won't. Because I've already taken action. I'm fixing all that.

That's right. No longer will tainted records pass by as mere numbers on a page--unqualified, unequevicolly accepted, un-illegitimatized. Because that's all changed...

....with my new book! The Purified Book of Major League Baseball Records and Statistics.

You'd better believe Barry* Bonds*'s record* will be asterisked in my book. So will his single-season homerun record*. As will any other accomplishment from these last twenty dark years that we now know as the "Steroid Era."

But I didn't stop there. I couldn't rest until every record and large-scale accomplishment in the history of Major League Baseball was flagged with its appropriate details and discreditations.

Unfortunately, the book isn't quite ready for publish. However, in the name of this blog's boundless pursuit of puritanical purity, I offer you this preview:














































































Barry* may feel like a big man tonight, but it won't be long until baseball fans and non-baseball fans alike will know the truth--that every baseball record they hold dear may be tainted with the taint of impure taintage. And no one will ever tackle us.

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From AT&T Park in San Francisco I'm Pedro Gomez, ESPN

Scene: Post-game on the night that Barry Bonds finally hits 756. Outside the Giants locker room, ESPN correspondant Pedro Gomez stands, microphone in hand, ready to go on air.

Scott Van Pelt: And now with more on tonight's historic milestone, ESPN's Pedro Gomez joins us from San Francisco. Pedro?

Pedro Gomez: Scott, the mood in San Francisco tonight can best be described as more relief than celebration. 756 marks the end of a long, excruciating struggle that the historic chase's tragic hero will never forget.

SVP: Pedro, you've said that Bonds has expressed relief over the chase coming to an end, has he--

PG: [interrupting] Bonds? I didn't say anything about Bonds. I'm the 'tragic hero' here, Scott. I mean come on, I've been stuck out here covering this pompous clown while you namby pamby assholes sit back in Connecticut cutting half of my pieces from the air.

SVP: [taken aback] Well, uh, Pedro, this really isn't the time or the place to talk about sacrifices you've--

PG: Oh, cut the shit, pretty boy.

[pulls can of beer out of pants pocket and cracks it open]

I'm the one who's watched a promising journalism career head straight down the can while spending three-plus years covering this farce. I'm the one that has to spend every night in a tiny room in a Best Western in Oakland - fucking Oakland - because ESPN only pays $45 a night for my accomadations because of some bullshit about my not having enough "years of service" with the network. Don't tell me about sacrifice.

[takes a long chug of beer, a majority of which ends up on his shirt and face]

Did you know that I sleep with a handgun under my pillow in case I get robbed again? Last time they took my socks, man, my socks!

SVP: Pedro, I'm sorry, but we're gonna have to cut you off...

PG: [loosening tie] Oh, sure, cut me off. Now that the chase is over, who needs ol' Pedro, eh? This is BS. Do you have any idea what I've gone through while covering this neanderthal? The guy will barely talk to me, and when he does it's just five straight minutes of him yelling at me and calling me a fag.

[in between sips of beer] Did you know he and Randy Winn once decided, on a whim, to hold me down, de-pants me and squirt an entire tube of BenGay on my crotch and then laugh hysterically while I ran pantsless around the clubhouse with my nuts on fire frantically looking for a towel only to have Barry Zito and Pedro Feliz snap me with towels until my butt cheeks turned so red my ass looked like John Kruk's face after sprinting up ten flights of stairs?

Or the night I spent hanging from a hook in a bathroom stall with my underwear wedgied so far up my ass I could feel the tag in the back of my throat, all because I asked Barry a question he didn't like.

SVP: Uh, Pedro, this really isn't--

PG: Or the time when he went 0-4 and decided, in the middle of an interview, to give me a pink belly so hellacious I couldn't eat solid food for a week? Does that ever make the air? Does it? Nooo, because I'm too much of a pussy, always toeing the company line, so it's all sunshine and rainbows and stories about how Barry made a great adjustment on a 2-2 pitch from David Wells. Well screw that. From now on, Pedro's only lookin' out for one guy - Pedro.

[chugs remainder of his beer, throws empty can at passing clubhouse attendant, pulls half-empty bottle of Yukon Jack from suit pocket, uncorks with teeth and takes a long pull]

How's this for a report, ass wads? "Barry Bonds was a dick yesterday, he's a dick today and he'll probably be a dick tomorrow." Is that what you've sent me out here to learn so that you fucks have something to put on the air in between some asinine Nascar story and the latest installment of "Who's Now?" Gimme a fuckin' break.

You know what, fuck this. I'm done.

[takes another long pull of whiskey, and pulls out a handgun from inside waist of his pants]

How's this for a signoff, cocksuckers? ESPN can lick the remnants of Ben Gay from my chemically scarred nutsack and those of you watching at home can fuck yourselves with the rosin bag Bonds once threatened to shove up my ass. How's that go over with the soulless pricks at Disney?

[begins firing randomly in the air]

[yelling amid screaming passersby] From AT&T Park in the darkest depths of hell, I'm Pedro Gomez, , ESP MOTHERFUCKIN' N.

[cut to Van Pelt in the stuido]

SVP: [clears throat] Coming up next on SportsCenter, did Derek Jeter and the bombers have enough firepower to hold off a late surge from the Blue Jays?

Neil Everett: And later, our "Who's Now" panel tackles the hot issue of the day: Anna Kournikova or Sidney Crosby? Hear what our experts had to say. Stay tuned.

[cut to commercial]

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756 or 756*? A torn fan's dilemma

It's said that you can really only feel one of two ways about Barry Bonds, that you love him or hate him. Everyone around McCovey Cove seems to be in praise of Bonds and his pursuit to become baseball's all-time home run king, steroids or no steroids. Everyone on the other side of the fence seems absolutely convinced that Bonds used steroids and as such, he is forever branded as a cheater.

I guess I disprove that theory because I honestly can't decide. But Margaret Thatcher (I'm willing to be that's her first mention on this blog) said that standing in the middle of the road was dangerous because then you'll get knocked down by traffic coming in both directions.

So here's what I think on Bonds, not because you really give a damn what I think. (Christ, people, don't look to sportswriters, much less amateur ones. Make up your own minds.) I'm rather writing this because it will likely be decidedly less relevant once he breaks the record.

First off the case against Bonds. To the un-medical-schooled eye, it's obvious that Bonds has undergone a remarkable physical transformation over his career. However, I'm no doctor. Frankly, as the rest of this staff will attest, I don't know the first thing about body building, unless the building materials involve frozen pizza and beer. So, I can't really tell whether it's steroids or just a really good training program that's kept him in shape all these years. Looking at Bonds' statistics, it's easy to point at his 73-home run total in 2001 when he was allegedly 'roided up, and his 14-game 2005 campaign as a time for him to "clean himself out." However, such an assertion would be pure conjecture. That's the dilemma of the case around Bonds. There seems to be a lot of circumstantial evidence, but nothing hard and fast to point to. No smoking gun as it were. There's a lot of smoke, so it would be reasonable to judge that there's probably a fire somewhere, but that brings us to the second part of our story...

There really is no smoking gun. Hell, other than his '01 73-homer outlier, Bonds has pretty consistently hit 35-45 homers per season both before and after '01 when healthy. Despite that key fact, things look really bad for Bonds in terms of the public eye, and Lord knows his perpetual hostility towards the media has not helped him in this regard. But still, there really isn't any proof that Bonds is undeniably a cheater. There are investigations, subpoenas, and tell-all books, but to the best of my knowledge, there's nothing completely damning so far. Otherwise, there wouldn't be a debate at all. It would be settled fact.

On that front, we have to remember that the mainstream news media, and the mainstream sports media have both jumped the gun before when it looked pretty bad. Oops. Ever since then, whenever serious charges are thrown out (like, Bonds is a cheater) that go to the core of a person's character, we need to demand a higher standard of proof rather than just allegations and circumstantial evidence. However, at the same time, with one of sport's greatest records being threatened, fans feel a need to ask those same tough questions of any dubious claim on the title.

In the end, it's kind of sad, and maybe on a deeper, more pretentious level, it's a microcosm of our public debate in general because both sides are firing accusatory questions past each other, without really taking all the facts into account.

And why should they? Their minds are already made up and nothing is going to change that. Bonds is already the greatest home-run hitter ever, if not the greatest all-around player ever and damn what anyone else thinks. They're just jealous. Bonds is a cheater and a disgrace to the game, and damn any absence of proof. We don't need any.

PS: I included the picture because I thought it was funny.

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Mike Hunt...is shaking with anticipation...is sweating in the presence of Barry Bonds...cannot write a coherant column because he is in fact, a cunt

We here at YCS have had our fair share of laughs at the expense of mainstream media trying to cover small market teams, but you know what's waaaaaaaaaay funnier? Small market media coverage of mainstream stories. To be more specific, small market, sweaty journalists with a fourth-grade education and a hilarious name working for a shitty newspaper, writing an even shittier column on mainstream stories.

And thus I bring you to the latest installment of our special Milwaukee series, "Can you believe this second-rate columnist's parents actually named him Michael Hunt?" Comedic gold.

There is no video on this one. I apologize, though I'm really saving you from some horrible images that would later have to be burned out of your mind with some sort of ritual involving the blood of a virgin.

Now, you know the column is going to be a gem when he starts out with this longwinded...um, I don't know, can you call it a joke?

If you happened to be sitting outside the Miller Park foul poles Thursday it was hard to keep your eyes off the left-field wall, but not because of anything Geoff Jenkins or EricByrnes were doing in the course of their daily responsibilities.
Do you see where he's going with this one? Me neither.
That's where the San Francisco-Chicago score was being periodically flashed for the benefit of the morbidly curious, except that someone from stadium maintenance neglected to affix skull-and-crossbones stickers as a warning of the area's toxicity.
um...still not making much sense. If I weren't out to ridicule you, I would have stopped reading by now.
You looked for the same reason you can't avert your gaze from a highway pileup or a Journey music video. To cite the apocalyptic Col.Kurtz, "The horror . . . the horror."
JESUS FU-...Okay, has anyone ever explained to you the concept of 'hooking' the reader? Has anyone ever explained to you that it's horrible journalism to string something out...and out...and out...and to do so in THE FUCKING LEAD? We're three paragraphs in and no logical being could possibly understand what you're babbling about. Forchrist's sake, why the hell do they make us take any journalism classes at all, if this is what is considered the best sports writing in the city of Milwaukee?
The Cubs . . . or Barry Bonds?
I'm sorry. What?
That's almost like being asked to choose between Yi Jianlian's reps and Drew Rosenhaus.
What?
Michael Vick and Vlad the Impaler.
WHAT?
Tony Montana and Tony Soprano.
You ate paint chips as a child, didn't you?

Now, you might think that this is an article about a hypothetical debate within Mike Hunt's mind over which is worse, Bonds or the Cubs. (Kind of like "Who's Now?" except no televisions get beer bottles thrown at them). But you, logical reader who has come to understand the basic concept of column writing, could not be more wrong.

He quickly answers that question, which remember he has spent the first 144 words leading up to, by saying that if you had to choose, you would take Barry. Not because the Cubs are the Brewers only legitimate challenge to the division crown. No, because Cubs fans puke in our parking lot and act like jerks. Okay, let's move on. Hope you enjoyed wasting five minutes of your life to follow Hunt's path to a dead end. So, whoops, back up. Quick, write a seamless transition into what you really want to talk about.

Anyway, Bonds may even be more receptive than your average Cubs fan to an entreaty for civility among baseball's most polite assembly:

Just don't do it here, Barry.

Note to anyone trying to become a legitimate journalist. If you find yourself starting a paragraph with the great tangent-follower, "Anyway..." go back and delete the last three graphs. At least. Actually, you're probably better off starting over. Not the column. Your career. Try something that doesn't involve writing.

And now that we've actually gotten to the "point" of the column, it was better off going down the Bonds vs. Cubs trail. Anyone who thinks that Bonds is going to break the record, or even tie the record, on the road, is insane. Now I'm not going to go over all the reasons that this is a dumb idea for a column, fueled by even dumber arguments. If you want to make yourself laugh and gag at the same time, read it for yourself.

I just want to counter that horrible opening with an even more horrible ending.

Maybe this could be averted if Bonds hits No. 754 tonight. Maybe then the Giants would sit him the rest of the series.
Then why did you write this column? Really, with Yi holding out, but maybe not holding out...Adam Dunn trade rumors swirling and dying in the span of a day...Matt Wise getting his second career hit...and the very-soon-to-be home run king coming to your city...THIS was the best story idea you could come up with. And then, at the very end of the column, you mention that there is a POSSIBILITY that Bonds would sit if he got within one home run of the record, a very likely possibility. So your whole column was pointless. Except of course as one hell of an example of terrible journalism. I can't wait to see how you wrap this one up.
Just a thought. Anywhere but here on Henry's turf.
Ah, I see you chose the two-sentances-that-have-no-connection-to-each-other route. Very nice. Seriously, I applaud your ability to cap such a shitstorm with a non-conclusion that doesn't even make sense. Do you just throw sentances into a hat and randomly select their order?

This is where I would conclude with another Mike Hunt joke, but he has finally overshadowed his name with what might possibly be the worst column ever printed in an actual newspaper. As a writer and a Milwaukee native, I am truly embarrassed. I think I will crawl into my bed and slowly rock back and forth until I lose consciousness.

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Make Believe: A-Rod passes Bonds in 2015

As both Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez are each four HR from career milestones, I've been thinking a little bit about the potential for A-Rod to hold the all-time HR record a scant decade from now. Thus, I spent a little time today on Baseball Reference and in my own imagination envisioning how it might happen. And frankly, if God loves baseball, it will.

Let's start with the current situation: A-Rod has 496 career HRs and 1437 RBIs. He's 31 years old. He can do it. Here's how:

Scenario #1: A-Rod keeps up his current pace for another 8 years. If so, he'll be sitting on 800 HRs and 2400 RBIs, both the best of all time. Maybe he can; maybe he can't. Jimmy Foxx is the second youngest player to reach 500 HRs, but he finished with only 534 career HRs as he slid off very quickly (possibly due to a drinking problem according to some 'expert' on Wikipedia). In the early 90's, you probably could have envisioned Frank Thomas breaking Aaron's mark... and then all the injuries came (or whatever caused him to fall off). But there are plenty of greats and not-so-greats that kept up their hitting stats through their 30's: Hammerin' Hank himself, Ted Williams, Willie Mays, Tony Gwynn and the likes of Craig Biggio, Harold Baines, Brian Downing, Edgar Martinez, Paul Molitor, Andres Galarraga, Reggie Jackson. Sure, not each of these guys was hitting 42 HRs and 120 RBIs per year, but they still show that ballplayers can still swing the stick by the time they hit 40 years of age.

Scenario #2: A-Rod matches Barry's totals, 1997-2007 (age 31-current), over the next ten years of his career. If so, A-Rod will be even farther ahead: 823 HRs (though less RBIs, only 2226). And that's after I've erased Bonds' 73 HRs for 2001, a year in which the 'cream' may or may not have accounted for all 73 HRs so we'll erase them all just to be sure.

Scenario #3: Nobody pays A-Rod the $80 million/year he'll want for the rest of his career, and he retires at age 33. Sha, right.

Sure, Barry Bonds may not retire for another two years, but even the most well oiled and marginally productive machines eventually are considered 'not worth it' by their clubs. And all careers must come to end (except Ricky Henderson's). Still, I can't see Barry Bonds hitting many more than 800 HRs in his career.

The future's never certain, but I for one will be ignoring Barry Bonds this month and will keep my eyes on A-Rod's "Chasing Barry" saga.

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A thousand asterisks? Not enough, I say! A million trillion BILLION asterisks!

As we all know, a certain man* known as Barry* Bonds** is fast approaching a new* MLB career home run record***. And if he does break* this record, it will be the end of baseball and God as we know them.

But us baseball fans are too proud to let him accomplish** this feat*--at least not without yelling a lot and being really sanctimonious about it!

That's why I want to share this email we got yesterday:

The fans have waved over one thousand foam asterisks in stadiums across the country. Boston fans are preparing for the Boston Asterisk Party. Why have you not heard of it? Because MLB has effectively muted this protest.

Without good journalists like you the fans will not be heard. The LA Times, Sporting News, Canada, and Florida have jumped on board. Our next goal is to get 1,000 asterisk in the Bleachers on July 17th! Can you help us out with a little grass roots word of mouth?

This is the year the storied steroid era will resurface and with our help the fans will unite...

That's right! Good journalists like us! We will UNITE!! To end injustice! To fight the good fight! To perpetuate the idolatry of baseball records! To make sure we condemn, humiliate, and verbally threaten this cheater of a cheat of scumbum!

That's right--CHEATER. You're a CHEATER, Bonds*!!
A cheater!!!
CHEEEEAAAAT.... ERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

... ERRRRRRRRR!!!!!

...ERRRRRR!!!

...ERRRR...

Cheater, cheater, excrement eater!!!!!


...Sorry. Got a little carried away. Let me just compose my--


...NO GOOD CHEATING BASTARD ASTERISK ASTERISK ASTERISK YARRRRRRGHHHRRRRRRRGHHH!!!!!!!! *********************

Ok, done.

But the protest shouldn't stop at a thousand fans in the bleachers. No, friends. Our work will not be done until every set of opposable thumbs on this planet is gripping a foam asterisk on the day Barry** Bonds**** breaks****** the home*run* record**!!!

That's right--EVERY SET OF OPPOSABLE THUMBS.
EVEN MONKEYS.

And when he does break it, we will tag the outside of AT&T Park with an askerisk so big that Barry's f***ing eyes* will pop! And then we'll head over to Bonds* Manor and dispense herbicide in the shape of a 300 yard-by-300 yard asterisk on Barry's lawn! And then we'll piss in the shape of an asterisk in the middle of it!!! I mean... yeah, it won't show anymore once the urine evaporates... But it'll be one hell of a statement!! And then we'll hang Bonds* in effigy! And then we'll take down that effigy and piss on it too! Who's with me!!

Join the power!! Fight the good fight!! Fight the power!! Fight the good!! Power the join!! Good the good!!...

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A letter to Mr. Bonds.

Dear Barry,

I am writing to you on behalf of baseball fans everywhere. I know that it is awfully pretentious of me to assume the voice of some billion people worldwide, but someone needs to clear something up. Tuesday night I saw you play at Miller Park where you were, of course, booed by 30,000+ people that were there in hopes of seeing you hit a home run, so they could watch in awe...and then boo you some more. I half-heartedly joined in the boo parade (although I much more adamantly booed Craig Counsell's spot in the starting lineup). Since I kinda booed you, I thought I should explain myself, and in the process explain everyone else.

See, it's really not about you, personally. People aren't booing Barry Bonds; they're booing steroids. I'm betting that if you asked baseball fans straight up, "Are you really booing Bonds personally, or are you booing the steroids era?" you could get a lot of them to admit that it's the steroids themselves that piss them off, not an individual user of those drugs. And no, you're not singled out because it's so obvious you used steroids or because you're an asshole (if those were the only qualifications, we'd be all over Roger Clemens); you're singled out because you're going to break the most precious record in sports with the help of artificial performance enhancers. Steroids are interchangeable with the broad concept of cheating, which we like to pretend that we care about. Of course, any time we do anything competitive ourselves, we're more than likely to cheat. Who hasn't snuck a couple $500 bills from the Monopoly bank when our little brother wasn't paying attention? So yeah, we're hypocrites when we complain about cheaters, but we aren't about to etch our names into the MLB record books. You are. So the closer you get to that magical number, the harder we boo.

Now here's the tricky part. We don't really even care about the home run record. At least, we shouldn't. If any city has a right to be truly pissed at you for breaking the record, it's Milwaukee, where Hank Aaron is probably the biggest sports name in our city's history. But when you hit 755 and 756 sometime in July, will Aaron's name be at all tarnished? Have you lessened Babe Ruth's greatness by passing him up? Of course not. The game today is not the game it was then; the pitching mound is lower, the training is better, the body armor is fucking ridiculous, to name a few changes...so to compare any numbers, you need to add an asterisk.

So here's why we're really pissed off about the whole steroids thing. Because you, and the rest of baseball, tricked us. Now, I'm speaking for the general population here, and not for die-hard baseball fans, but after the 94 strike, we were fed up with baseball. The egos and the money and the bullshit was too much for many of us to handle, and we left baseball. Then in 1998 Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire had their unforgettable race to 61 and we were won back. The commercials were only half telling the truth when they said that chicks dig the long ball, because chicks, men, children and beast all want to see home runs, and all of a sudden everyone was hitting them. So we came back, and baseball regained its rightful spot as America's Pastime.

Then the steroid reports broke open and all the home runs that we had been drooling over were suddenly illegitimate, at least partially. Now we're faced with one mindfuck of a dilemma. We still love the home runs, and Sosa/McGwire or not, we've been reminded that we really do love baseball...but we hate that we were tricked into coming back. We feel duped, and we are really pissed off at steroids for duping us.

We're not about to stop watching baseball, and we sure as hell are not about to stop cheering home runs. So our only alternative is to insist that Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron are still the home run champs. Then we find a few scapegoats and boo them and yell the cleverest of chants like "Steeeeeeer-oids, Steeeeeeer-oids." And I'm afraid you're going to have to take the heaviest dose because of the whole 755 business. But just remember that we're not booing you. We're booing our own contradictory nature.

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A death threat to Barry Bonds

DISCLAIMER: THE FOLLOWING IS A JOKE INTENDED TO MOCK THE ABSURDITY OF FANS WHO PHYSICALLY THREATEN ATHLETES. THE AUTHOR HAS NO INTENT OR MEANS TO HARM ANYONE, LEAST OF ALL A FAMOUS PRO ATHLETE, SO DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT TAKING IT SERIOUSLY IF YOU'RE A COPPER OR SOMETHING. NOW HAVING SAID ALL THAT, THIS POST REALLY WASN'T WORTH IT, NOR IS IT ALL THAT FUNNY. BUT SINCE I ALREADY WROTE IT, I'LL BE DAMNED IF IT GOES UNUSED.

DeAr BaRrY,
I aM GOing to kill U. If i

...You know what, Barry. This is too much work. I'm just going with one font the rest of the way if that's fine by you. Anyway, yeah, like I said I'm gonna kill you. It's a shame it's gotta be this way, but that's just how it is.

Here's the thing--I'm not even that upset that you're breaking Hank Aaron's record or taking HGH or anything. I've wanted to kill you for a while now, but now with so many other people wanting you killed too, I figure I finally have a good excuse.

You should know why I'm so mad though. Remember that homerun record chase back in 2001? Yeah, you know, the one where everyone tracked your every at bat and every move on your way to 73 homeruns? That was pretty awesome--until it got personal.

You see Barry, it was a mid-September evening, and I was taking in a thrilling rerun of The 2-Minute Drill on ESPN2. Brian from Jersey was just about to receive his Question of Great Significance when--guess what--ESPN cuts away to show your first inning at bat. And you wanna guess what you did in that at bat? That's right--you walked. Whooptie fuckin' doo.

By the time they cut back to regular programming, NFL 2Night had already started. To this day, I still don't know if Brian from Jersey won his money. Damn you, Barry.

Now I'm ready to act on this impulse I've kept inside for far too long. Time heals nothing, and I will never forgive you. Because you wronged me so, I am willing to sacrifice my clean criminal record, my restful conscience, my freedom, the companionship of my loved ones, and every possession I own just to make sure you pay.

And don't think this is an empty threat. These things are always for real, Barry. I mean, like, literally, expect to be dead in the not-too-distant future. Have you ever seen The Fan? You may not think so, but there actually are people like me who are willing to give up everything of conceivable value to ourselves and ruin our families just to carry out a personal grudge against a professional athlete whom we do not know and whose actions have very little bearing on our lives. I know no one's ever followed through on one of these in the past, but for real, this one's totally different. I mean, seriously, watch your back. Or don't. Not like it's gonna matter. Either way, you're dead dude.

Sincerely,
Anonymous person

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