You Decide!
Obviously I'm biased, but I think this is just silly. Marc Ecko claims he's using the ball as a spark for serious public debate (I'm guessing the mountain of publicity it's getting him also may have been a consideration). Here's his opinion on the matter:Ecko, who is letting the public decide what to do with Bonds' record-setting baseball, said he had voted to brand the historic sphere with an asterisk that would suggest the Giants slugger used steroids on his way to breaking Hank Aaron's career homer mark. But Ecko said Major League Baseball is to blame for Bonds' predicament because it ignored signs for years that players were using performance-enhancing drugs.
"The notion that a system in Major League Baseball kind of knew that this was going on, and kind of played ostrich, and then indicts its players for wanting to achieve great things and earn big bucks - I more have a bugaboo with a system that fosters and actually rewards unnatural behavior," Ecko said in a phone interview.
I actually share Ecko's opinion that MLB itself is mostly to blame for the face it's lost over this issue. But regardless of what you think of Bonds and the impact steroids have had on the last few decades of professional sports, the record is what it is. The ball is now a part of baseball's history, and it would be a shame to see it defaced or destroyed simply on the whims of the internet masses -- who, in my experience, cannot always be trusted to have the best judgement.
Anyway, here's a thought I had at work today while doing a podcast of this program for FORA: a century from now, when only the people playing pro sports are those whose parents could afford to buy them, in vitro, the genetic makeup of athletic supermen, will steroid abusers of our day still be seen as cheaters?
I'm kind of serious. Remember this?
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posted by Nick Ryan @ 8:05 PM
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