ESPN.com: Page 2 – How can you be sure?
I’ve started to weigh in on the steroid news a few times, but really haven’t had anything new to add. So I deleted the posts I’d written.
This references a Skip Bayless column that offers Barry Bonds some reasonable doubt. I think Bonds is the greatest ballplayer we’ve ever seen, the greatest we could ever see, but I’m nagged by his late-career rebirth. I think it’s possible he got serious about conditioning and did this, but I think it’s far more likely that, like Mark McGwire, he saw his physical reliablity in eclipse and decided to do something about it.
And so he trained hard and he got extra stuff. Stuff that was legal, at least according to MLB’s rules.
What I know for sure is that the rules that McGwire and Bonds (and perhaps Sosa and others have violated) are only going to be redefined. With each generation of nutrition, supplements and technology, we’re going to see new assaults on our notions of the integrity of records. We can pretend it’s a level playing field, but that certainly isn’t true.
For each generation what willl matter is what is happening now, and the glory of the past will be devalued as measure (without necessarily being devalued as narrative).
That’s as it should be. Bonds eclipsing Ruth or Aaron doesn’t diminish them. It’s just part of the ongoing story that amazes and intrigues us. Which is as it should be. That’s the new way.