Braun Suspended for Balance of the 2013 Season

[itjclarke]

Originally Posted by drcy

I'm from Wisconsin and grew up a Brewers fan. I just know that when there's latest serious PED rumor (that later turns out to be true) the home town fans go into a state of self denial, or a state of denying the obvious, about their hometown player and swear on a stack of bible's he's innocent and wrongly accused. Happened with Giants fans Barry Bonds, happened Cardinals fans and McGwire and happened with Brewers fans and Braun. If Bonds played with the A's, those same Giants fans would have said he was a cheater. If Braun played for the Boston Red Sox, the same Brewers fans would have said he was guilty. That's the way it invariably works.

As A Giants fan, I know that I and most of my friends were not in any state of denial over Bonds or BALCO... Nor were we about Marvin Benard, Armando Rios and FP Santangelo. What drove me nuts is that it seemed like almost all focus was on a half dozen or fewer players, when seemingly the majority of the league was using.

Clearly Bonds was the best hitter of the bunch and was approaching MLB's most hallowed record.. But I thought then and still think now, the bigger problem lies with fringe players. Guys who feel compelled to use because "the other guy is, and he'll take my roster spot". There are many many more of those players (hundreds to thousands) affected by steroids than there are upper tier. Chasing the stars makes headlines, and needs to be done.. But something needs to be done to protect those 24th-25th men, or 4A type players that are forced to make those decisions early on. SI did a great artcicle on these types of player about a year ago.

Re- Bonds, I believe he used, but I also believe what he did was amazing. I accept it may have been sacreligious to most of the MLB fan base, but remember he was hitting 450 bombs off juiced pitchers (see Eric Gagne) throwing triple digits by virtue of that juice. Though very tough to quantify, it seems overall fastball MPH has gone down in the past few years. Steroids or not, the baseball seen in the 90's to early 2000's was possibly the fastest, strongest, most powerful game we'll ever see played. That said, I'm a far bigger fan of the pitching and defense dominated style of play exhibited by the 2010 and 2012 Giants.