Saturday, July 28, 2007

Bonds Hits 754, Sheffield Speaks

Barry Bonds hit career homer number 754 in the Giants' 12-10 victory over the Marlins yesterday. After his home run, he was then walked 4 straight times. The home run left him one short of Hank Aaron's career record.

As usual Gary Sheffield had something to say about the situation:

``Bud Selig is making himself the face of the steroid era,'' Sheffield told USA Today. ``Why doesn't Bud Selig tell the truth? Why does he keep lying and saying he doesn't know nothing about nothing? It's a bunch of hogwash. It's a cop-out. He knew everything (about steroids) we knew.


``Bud Selig wants to talk about the integrity of the game? To him, the integrity of the game is how much money they make.''

From my view as an outsider, it's hard to disagree with what Sheffield is saying. As a fan, I'm not happy to see one of the greatest players in the history of the game be made the scapegoat for an industry-wide problem. I'd rather see them try to put steroid problems in the past and move forward. Baseball should be celebrating this chase rather than fighting it.

It's also very difficult for me to believe that Selig and MLB did not know what was going on in regards to steroids. And I'm certain that the sport has profited nicely from the home run explosion in the game. The steroid issue does not begin or end with Barry Bonds. There is plenty of blame to be shared.

Sheffield said later that he does not want to talk about it anymore and wants to concentrate on winning a championship:
"There's going to be a lot of things talked about and said, and when it comes to this type of stuff, I'm not going to even talk about it anymore", Sheffield said before the Tigers' game against Anaheim.

"I want to take this ballclub to a championship,'' Sheffield said. ``I'm not going to focus on outside distractions. Whatever I can do to take distractions out, I'm going to do, even if I have to sacrifice speaking out on certain things. This is more important. This team is more important than anything for me.''
As Danny Knobler said, we will see how long that lasts.

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