Didn't really think so.  It's all good.

my 2 cents.
1. other then throwing games..the peds were the worst type of cheating in baseball history...it is the greatest illegal advantage ever attained and it is 162 games plus..all 9 innings...24/7...
2.peds create an advantage that goes beyond natural human potential...that should speak for itself.
3. most defenders do so out of alliance for beloved hero or hometown team.
4.everybody in the minor leagues and major leagues " can hit "........to varying degrees of sucesss...saying they still have to hit the ball is a rather ludicrous comment.
5..the extreme ped usage causes an obvious physical appearance...
6 the extreme usage creates all stars from average players and babe ruths from allstars.
7.hall of fame voters are not bound to technical reasonable doubt standards of criminal law.
8 if we found out that in the 20s and 30s that ruth gehrig and foxx were given an experimental drug..but no one else...what would their records mean to us now..
 9 if we found out that bill russell was a good player who was given an experimental drug that made him a superior rebounder instead of a good one and wilt did not what would the celtic titles mean now.
 10...the 1993 phillies were a fraud...im a phillies fan.
11..how about the non cheaters who lost major league jobs because of the cheaters...or awards or allstar berths.
 12..basball is the ONLY sport where you can validly compare players across eras at least since 1920 to the present until steroids ruined record keeping.
 13..i cant watch baseball  anymore without suspicion.

Amen dino27. Well said. The great seasons Clemens had with the Yankees in the late 1990s were a fraud as well, and I am a Yankees fan. 

In Bonds' case, what is tragic is that he was so brilliant without steroids, a 40-40 player, but wanted the recognition that McGwire and Sosa were getting and so did what they did to get it. 

So we have records that will never be broken again except by androids or whatever (some will find an excuse for letting them play too one day). What a waste. 

let there be a wing in the hall of fame called the hall of infamy....of course the androids would have to be called and-roids.

I was trying to explain some of the joys of baseball to Italian college professors the other day (don't ask) and was talking about the cool nicknames - the Babe, Shoeless Joe etc. and realized that there don't seem to be many interesting nicknames in baseball in recent years. 

I think this may be a contributing factor - did Barry Bonds have a nickname? Did Sammy Sosa? Roger Clemens was technically "the Rocket" but that is as boring as drying paint. "Big Mac" is merely descriptive and is several steps behind "The Big Hurt" for example as a good nickname. 

So one problem may have been that these guys sought attention because no one thought to give them good nicknames. 

On the other hand that was also true of Jeter (how did he not get a nickname?), or Wade Boggs, or Greg Maddux. What is happening to American culture ? Give these players some decent nicknames ! 

How did we go from a  culture that could produce Shoeless Joe, or Vinegar Bend Mizell (ok, he was right-wing Senator and government Secretary with Nixon and Reagan, but having had the nickname "Vinegar Bend" - for his hometown in Alabama  - makes up for a lot), or Satchel, or "The Iron Horse" or "The Big Train" or Dizzy Dean to one that can't think up a good name for people who hit 60-73 homers or won a kazillion Cy Young Awards. 

This is a sign of cultural decline. Our politicians don't really have nicknames anymore either - we used to have "Father of His Country", "The Great Emancipator", "The Kingfish", even Reagan was - ugh, I hate even repeating it "the Great Communicator", and Nixon was "Tricky Dick". People tried to give Bill Clinton "Slick Willy" but it did not really stick. 

No one could possibly give Obama a nickname it seems to me, nor Jeb Bush. Something is just wrong. "Give ''em Hell Harry" (Truman) arose from the same culture that "Mr. October" or "Charley Hustle" did. 

Sports nicknames died when people started calling Wally Szczerbiak "Wally World".  The universe's nickname structure collapsed in on itself at that moment because Wally "Wally World" Joyner was still an active player.  They crossed the nicknaming streams.

It might not have been catastrophic.  It didn't have to be this way, but Rick Cerrone and Lee Mazzilli had already destabilized the construct.

Note: Wally Szczerbiak's nickname should have been, obviously, "The Consonant".

He needed to buy a vowel for sure. Well said llamanunts, thanks for the cogent explication. 

Curse you "Wally World" repeaters ! Why couldn't you have called him "The Consonant ?!!"  Why? 

I thinki it is a sign of lack of affection towards players and even between teammates...fans today relate to all celebrities the same whether movie or television stars or athletes...there is detachment and they are all disposable products...mickey mantle doesn't care about us and we don't care about mickey mantle.

Yeah, they - players, musical stars, TV and movie stars, politicians, millionaires and billionaires - live in the clouds on Elysium. 

The rest of us are the Red Shirts on Star Trek. 

This is an extreme point in the history of what people used to call "Western Civilization". What do I mean? 

The whole population of Athens crowded into the ampitheater for the three days of plays in the contest for best writer during the Dionysian festival. The casts were recruited from ordinary citizens. But those citizens attending voted on who had written the best play and kept voting for the quality of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripedes. 

Shakespeare's plays were attended by ordinary people as well as the Queen, and it cost a penny to go to the theater. They weren't "culture".

Michaelangelo may have been the greatest sculptor ever, but he was also a stone cutter - he had to be to be a sculptor, and was a member of the stone cutter's guild, cutting slabs of Carrara marble along with other ordinary but skilled workers.

Spinoza was a lens maker. 

William Blake and a century later William Morris were ordinary but highly gifted artisans, craftsmen, who were also great poets and artists. 

Einstein worked in the customs house in Switzerland while he was developing his theory of Special Relativity. 

And ordinary workers and shopkeepers played baseball and professional ballplayers worked in the offseason at ordinary jobs. 

Today, the gap between those who work with figures, concepts, who plan, strategize, or who are celebrities occurs on one level, and the rest of life, work, society elsewhere. We complain about baseball because it was supposed to be sacred, outside the realms of time. But today people are catching up and this degree of inequality is becoming noticeable across the board. 

This is true even of celebrity speakers, including those on the left, but also on the right: some of recent presidential candidates seem to have run only so they could then go on book tours and celebrity speaking circuits where they command tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands for a single talk. But I was shocked sometimes at the extravagant fees expected by some supposedly radical left speakers popular on campuses as well, often many thousands for a single talk or lecture. Yet look at the 19th century and everyone from abolitionists, to feminists like Susan B. Anthony to socialists like Eugene Debs, to vegetarian advocates, religious Chattaqua preachers and revivalists criss-crossed the United States on speaking circuits and none of them got rich, though they built a country and gave it an intellectual and political culture and life. 

That'll be $50,000 please. 

no more shared subway rides...24/7 talk radio criticism stangles glorification..no more heroes...ticket prices.cause back to athens...cheaters galore...divas......prima donnas...knuckelheads...salary caps....commisioner coward...rapists..druggies...abusers...sports agents...defense attorney unions....them vs us....whats not to like...

Posted by dino27 on 4/24/2015 11:58:00 AM (view original):
I thinki it is a sign of lack of affection towards players and even between teammates...fans today relate to all celebrities the same whether movie or television stars or athletes...there is detachment and they are all disposable products...mickey mantle doesn't care about us and we don't care about mickey mantle.

You make a decent argument in this post that people, generally, have gotten wise to some bullshit.  I'm pretty sure that that wasn't your point, though.

Posted by italyprof on 4/24/2015 1:21:00 PM (view original):
Yeah, they - players, musical stars, TV and movie stars, politicians, millionaires and billionaires - live in the clouds on Elysium. 

The rest of us are the Red Shirts on Star Trek. 

This is an extreme point in the history of what people used to call "Western Civilization". What do I mean? 

The whole population of Athens crowded into the ampitheater for the three days of plays in the contest for best writer during the Dionysian festival. The casts were recruited from ordinary citizens. But those citizens attending voted on who had written the best play and kept voting for the quality of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripedes. 

Shakespeare's plays were attended by ordinary people as well as the Queen, and it cost a penny to go to the theater. They weren't "culture".

Michaelangelo may have been the greatest sculptor ever, but he was also a stone cutter - he had to be to be a sculptor, and was a member of the stone cutter's guild, cutting slabs of Carrara marble along with other ordinary but skilled workers.

Spinoza was a lens maker. 

William Blake and a century later William Morris were ordinary but highly gifted artisans, craftsmen, who were also great poets and artists. 

Einstein worked in the customs house in Switzerland while he was developing his theory of Special Relativity. 

And ordinary workers and shopkeepers played baseball and professional ballplayers worked in the offseason at ordinary jobs. 

Today, the gap between those who work with figures, concepts, who plan, strategize, or who are celebrities occurs on one level, and the rest of life, work, society elsewhere. We complain about baseball because it was supposed to be sacred, outside the realms of time. But today people are catching up and this degree of inequality is becoming noticeable across the board. 

This is true even of celebrity speakers, including those on the left, but also on the right: some of recent presidential candidates seem to have run only so they could then go on book tours and celebrity speaking circuits where they command tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands for a single talk. But I was shocked sometimes at the extravagant fees expected by some supposedly radical left speakers popular on campuses as well, often many thousands for a single talk or lecture. Yet look at the 19th century and everyone from abolitionists, to feminists like Susan B. Anthony to socialists like Eugene Debs, to vegetarian advocates, religious Chattaqua preachers and revivalists criss-crossed the United States on speaking circuits and none of them got rich, though they built a country and gave it an intellectual and political culture and life. 

You expand on that point in a way that is coherent and worth engaging.  About speaking fees - I don't have a problem with them on either side of the aisle.

"Lotsa interesting words in a row, here!  I'll come to your place and tell 'em to a buncha people!  What's that worth to ya?"

"Many dollars!"

"I'll take that deal!"

I don't see the problem.  I don't think that getting money for one's ideas and words necessarily cheapens those ideas or words.  I think it's just an industry that didn't really exist before.

Posted by dino27 on 4/24/2015 5:47:00 PM (view original):
no more shared subway rides...24/7 talk radio criticism stangles glorification..no more heroes...ticket prices.cause back to athens...cheaters galore...divas......prima donnas...knuckelheads...salary caps....commisioner coward...rapists..druggies...abusers...sports agents...defense attorney unions....them vs us....whats not to like...

Now this, this isn't even a word salad.  This is just a stack of incoherent crap.  I guess there are some greivances in there?  I wouldn't start here if I had to go nail stuff to doors, though.

im sorry llamanuts that you don't get my point. I wasn't aware that I was in a classroom and that you are the teacher.