There must be votes in baseball

I still believe that all of this stems from a desire to "get Barry Bonds because he's sending the wrong message to young people."

I'm sure the last thing anyone wanted was to involve squeaky clean white stars like Clemens and Pettitte. So here's a few questions to go along with Petty's right on observations.

Since the purpose of performance enhancers isn't to build strength -- rather it is to mask pain so that strength training can contine -- then it's easy to see that there's something silly about penalizing some pain maskers and embracing others.

Every sport uses cortisone shots to ease pain so that players can train and play. Cortisone IS A STEROID. Oh, I hear you cry, but it's not illegal! True, but the vast majority of baseball players suspended the last two seasons were suspended for using drugs that were not illegal when they took them. In one case, a player bought his supplements over the counter for two years. When he found out they were going to be banned, he stopped taking them and then, three years later, the residue of his previous LEGAL use was enough to get him caught.

The stupidity of this legal/illegal stuff was brought to the forefront when Mitchell said that they weren't interested in investigating players taking barbituates or amphetemines -- only steroids. The only reason I can think why this is so, is that the 50s - 80s were the heyday of "greenies." Books like Jim Bouton's Ball Four and Jim Brosnan's The Long Season [among many, many others] are filled with stories of players popping these pain suppressors -- illegally -- to keep themselves capable of playing. The problem is, of course, that dealing with this reality [In Cincinnati, the Reds clubhouse had punch bowls filled with "greenies" that players popped like M & Ms], is that the committee would have to admit that performance enhancing drugs were taken during the period when Pete Rose, Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and yes -- Hank Aaron -- were setting their records.

Finally, the Senate [and most fans] only associated this sort of stuff with Bonds and pretty much figured that getting Bonds would end the controversy and restore Hank Aaron as the HR king, while giving the sportswriters, who have hated Bonds since he was a skinny rookie in Pittsburgh, a reason NOT to vote him into the Hall of Fame. Trouble is, let's say that Bonds was using enhancers, what advantage did this give him over a pitching staff filled with "cheaters?"

And, as a post-script, this entire Washington fiasco was created as a means to force Bonds to confess his wrong-doings and, tangentially, to get fellow players to rat Bonds out. Well, neither of these has happened -- probably because there's nothing that exists that can convict Bonds of either using or lying about it. And, because he doesn't give a rats about what people think, he's not going to be pressured to "do the right thing."

So they gotta get someone. It's going to be interesting to see how they're going to nail Roger's "Doctor Feelgood" while exonerating Roger himself. But I have faith in Congress. After all, Dan Burton works there. :shock: