A Dirty Milestone

"Daddy, why is that man running around the field like that?"

"Oh M, he's just running around the bases. He just hit a home run."

"A home run? What's a home run, daddy?"

"Well that's when you hit the ball so far that it lands in the crowd where we sit when we take you to baseball games."

"Daddy, why are those people in the crowd fighting over the ball?"

"Because, M, this is a very special home run for that man who is running around the bases. It's the most home runs that anybody has ever hit in the history of baseball. The people in the crowd think the ball might be worth a lot of money."

"Daddy, why did that man hit the most home runs of anybody in baseball history?"

And so my oldest daughter, at the ripe old age of three and a half, learned this morning from her father what it means when someone "cheats". Because no fucking way I wasn't going to tell her the truth on this one. No fucking way.

See, here's the thing. I don't trust baseball. I don't trust the sport, the commissioner, the players, basically anybody involved with the game to actually come out openly and discuss and admit what has gone on with all this steroids business. While it's a messy solution to be sure, this is a messy quadnary that the major leagues got itself in to by not addressing the growing steroid problem rampant in its sport in the 80s and 90s, so there's probably not going to be an easy "right" outcome. It's going to be tough no matter what gets done. But I just don't trust the powers that be in the sport of baseball in this country to make sure in the official record books, in the hall of fame, in every place that it really matters, that what Barry Bonds accomplished on Tuesday night was basically a load of bullshit. Make it an asterisk on his record, make an official proclamation of a time that will forever be marked as the "steroid era" in the annals of baseball (and all records from that time viewed accordingly), handle it how you want. But you simply have to address it when thinking about, say, who the greatest career home run hitter of all time was.

Now don't get me wrong. Barry Bonds is a fucking incredible hitter. Easily the best of my lifetime, and probably of the lifetime of anybody who is reading this today. But that doesn't mean that he deserves this record without an accompanying asterisk or something similar, and it doesn't mean that the steroid use is irrelevant to what has happened this week. Think about it -- for a period of at least 5 years from approximately 1999 through 2004, Barry Bonds took steroids. And if you read here often then you know that I am typically the very first to clarify that people are innocent until proven guilty of crimes in this country, something that as a lawyer myself I feel very strongly about for sure. But this case is different. In this case, Barry Bonds admitted he used steroids -- "the clear" and "the cream" that he received from Balco Laboratories in the Bay Area while he was a memeber of the the San Francisco Giants. While Barry inanely insists that he thought these substances were flaxseed oil and and some cockamamy bullshit lie and not steroids, even he still admits that he in fact used the substances that later proved to be steroids.

And here's the thing: I have now spoken with three Bonds apologists over the past few days, and the depth of the denial literally floors me. I just can't believe the stuff that people say. My good friend tells me the other day that he figures the steroids added maybe 50 home runs to Barry Bonds' lifetime totals. My own idiot older brother says they added 30 or 35 homers to his totals. What the eff is wrong with you people? For five years (at least), Barry Bonds used steroids and other injectable hormones that literally changed his body type. Forever. I don't need to rehash the hackneyed side-by-side shots of the old Bonds from his Pirates days next to the new Bonds in his current Giants uniform. The massively larger cranium (and probably smaller junk), the enormous change in even the forearms and the ankles, etc. The guy's body was changed completely and eternally, turned into a monstrous version of its original self, and during and after that time Bonds went on to hit about 500 home runs over an 8 year period, including of course the record-setting 73 home runs in 2001.

I remember the old Bonds. The original Bonds. The scrawny Bonds. The real Bonds. That guy was a good hitter too, hitting .300 every year and somewhere in the 30s for home runs. That little guy probably woulda scrapped his way just barely to make it to 500 home runs by the time his career was up. Instead he's going to hit nearly 800. So I'm subtracting three hundred home runs from his totals in my mind. Here is the perfect advertisement for the steroid problem in major league baseball, easily the most historic and traditional of all the major sports in the U.S. -- a guy who would have hit 500 home runs, but who instead pumped himself full of hormones and chemicals normally used for animals and not humans, and ended up getting his name all over the recordbooks, including what are basically the two most hallowed records in all of sports.

Okay, so getting back to the point of this post. I don't trust the major league baseball machine to tell the fans of today, and more importantly the fans of the future who weren't watching all these years to know what really happened, exactly how it went down that Barry Bonds and Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa et al hit all these home runs suddenly in the late 90s and early 2000s. They have too many reasons not to tell the truth, and there is very little anyone else can do to make them do otherwise. From an official perspective, we are basically stuck with whatever way major league baseball decides to report on all these home runs.

But that's where I come in. And you. We have the power to make sure that the next generation of kids, baseball fans and just fans of sport in general, know what really happened here. They would if they could, but baseball can't take that knowledge away from us. I argue that we have the right, in fact the obligation, to make sure to pass on the truth about Barry Bonds to the next generation, even if it's just one kid at a time. So wheh my daughter asked me what was happening on the tv during Sportscenter this morning, I told her the truth. All of it. Even the part MLB doesn't want my daughter to know. Eff that. Barry Bonds is an admitted cheater -- don't ever let anyone convince you otherwise -- and he ruined his body and his life just for the glory of being able to cheat his way to saying that he's the best, relying on his sport to refrain from using an asterisk or otherwise cheapening one of the richest periods in baseball history with scarlet letters and doping accusations.

I'm not going to let it happen. When my kids ever ask about the home run champions in baseball, they will always get the whole story from me. Hank Aaron hit the most home runs, kids, but then a cheater named Barry Bonds cheated and broke that record. But he's just a cheater who could hit a baseball really well Hank Aaron is the real home run champion. You guys who write often about your relationships with your kids, especially your sons (I'm a sexist like that I guess) -- guys like Speaker and Drizz most immediately come to mind -- I really hope you will be joining me in this effort to do the right thing for our kids, and for the world. Cheaters never win. Not in my house anyways.

No poker content today, how do ya like that? But don't forget the Mookie tonight, 10pm ET on full tilt, with a password as always of "vegas1". Buddydank Radio should be on and in full force for the week's largest gathering of bloggers and non-blogging poker enthusiasts alike. I am hoping to be in the field but some last-minute transit issues here on Wednesday due to massive rainstorms overnight have pushed off a bunch of morning meetings for me until Wednesday afternoon and evening instead, so my entire night -- including my already-won entry into FTOPS Event #1 tonight at 9pm ET -- may well be in jeopardy. Ahhh work. You fucking suck a dong lately.