Remaking Kelli White in ESPN’s Image

Former sprinter, Kelli White, made an admission of BALCO-related guilt and now says she has moved on with her life.

However, White broke down quite painfully in the midst of an interview with ESPN’s Mark Fainaru-Wada after talking about how other athletes perceive her and then attempted to explain how she is presently at peace with herself.

The stark truth, apparent from her emotional falling out (and even that might have been for effect, as there were no tears shown and as we all know, tears make for great heartstring-tugging television), is that Kelli White is haunted by ghosts of her own making. 

The Mighty Wurlitzer Says… Roger Clemens Out, Barry Bonds In (A Steroid Test “Typo”) and Dan Burton’s Big Lie

Damn it! Here we go again. The battle lines have been drawn and image will be a central issue with race as a backdrop – and Mike Greenberg made those lines clear today:

“I feel sorry for Roger Clemens…”

Greenberg feels sorry for Clemens because Wednesday for nearly five hours in front of Congress and a television national audience, the once shoe-in for the Hall of Fame pitcher did not have any of the rights of defense afforded to him that he would in a trial. He was so offended he said:

From Bonds to Clemens, from Ankiel to Taylor to Tilghman: We Missed the Moment and Now We Must Pay

Months ago when the Rick Ankiel-HGH news broke I wrote that his being outed represented – potentially – a watershed moment in sports and sportswriting. It was the moment when the subjects of race and racism, of PEDs in football, and constructive criticisms of all sports, especially the NFL, could be broached by a large enough portion of the U.S. populace to bleed into America at large. The treatment of Ankiel by mainstream sportswriters and by extension, Barry Bonds, would initially shape the tenor of conversation.

And it did.

Apologists for Ankiel came out of the woodwork from every corner of the nation. The public’s heartstrings were tugged at using the tried-and-true up from the ghetto to riches story and flipping it for a white athlete. Ankiel’s growing up with a dope fiend father and making good in the “Bigs” was half of a press mantra tag teamed with Ankiel being the “feel good story of the summer.” Writers expressed sorrow for having to report the news that Ankiel was involved in the Signature Pharmacy-anti-aging clinic HGH investigation.

Reading Jayson Stark-ly: Looking at Roger Clemens Through PED-Colored Glasses

Today Jayson Stark wrote a response, of sorts, to the criticism that his most recent column generated (including this article). To be blunt, today’s column is equally pitiful. This time, he’s sticking up for Andy Pettitte; he needs to stop. It seems for all the world that Stark needs a high, hard one under the chin to back him off the keyboard for a few days. 

I just wonder how, after his weak defense of Clemens was posted and after the pillorying he took for it, he was afforded the opportunity to write about Pettitte. Fool me once, shame on ——- yew. Fool me twice ————-  yew cain’t get fooled again…. Uh, yeah you can. Just read Stark’s commentary.

(thanks des)

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Jayson Stark played the “Journalism 101” card as an excuse for why he believes Barry Bonds used performance-enhancing drugs. More importantly, he uses the same excuse to suspend belief that Roger Clemens used PEDs. What is the golden rule, the crux of the biscuit of J 101?

Beyond the Barry Bonds Indictment: Over, Under, Sideways, Down…

There is something inherently wrong with the federal government and its four-year investigation and now indictment of Barry Bonds. Something is wrong about spending millions and millions of dollars of taxpayer money – and there is no law mandating that we even pay taxes – to chase evidence to prove that Bonds lied to a grand jury. There is something wrong with a society in which individuals within that society would, en masse, express a hatred toward a man they no nothing about rather than demand that the monies they have been illegally taxed be returned to them. The mass – the ruling mob – seems to be saying that they will pay money to watch the government chase down Barry Bonds, find enough evidence to get him into a court room, and then put him on trial. Perhaps they think it’s somehow the “cool” thing to do to pay for this sadistic act of watching another man’s misery; again, a man none of the mob knows.

Jeff Idelson of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum spoke for the mob when he agreed to take in Barry Bonds’ #756 home run baseball. He agreed to accept an artifact that no proper curator would accept: “Sir, would you accept the Mona Lisa. It has on her cheek the Ralph Lauren polo pony and rider trademark image, but that is representative of the sentiment of the people who have viewed other paintings by Leonardo Da Vinci.” A museum curator might be angry enough to have the perpetrator bodily removed.

But not Idelson. He said:

“Our preference was to have the ball donated unscathed. In this with the instance, we were looking past that because of its historical significance. It’s an important piece of baseball in American culture.”

“American culture” as Idelson says, is in this case either corporate America of which the Bonds baseball owner, Marc Ecko, is a part, or the mob – that Ecko is also a part (he dabbles in “the jungle” that is black urban America) – that pays good money in the way of taxes to have its pseudo-sadomasochistic fetishes fulfilled.

Barry Bonds Through Time

(This was originally posted just before Barry Bonds hit home run #756 and has been amended for Sports On My Mind.)

Barry Bonds is about to break Henry Aaron’s all-time home run record; the mark might fall tonight in San Francisco. Much of the discourse surrounding this soon-to-be event is, well, absurd. Many if not most of the arguments surrounding Bonds’ alleged performance-enhancing drug (PED) use are fallacious. Facts are skewed – such as, Bonds himself testified that he used PEDs – and lies are repeated – such as, Bonds never filed suit against Game of Shadows authors, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams – to the point where they become “facts.”

One of the most-repeated and perhaps most ridiculous arguments with Bonds relative to other great baseball players, is that Bonds “cheated” the game of baseball with his PED use. To a logical person, it should be enough that there is no proof of Bonds’ alleged PED use; any argument should end there. However, if one wants to postulate that Bonds did use PEDs, another ludicrous argument arises: Barry Bonds cheated and other great baseball players did not.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Amphetamines or “speed” – drugs that can cause conditions such as heart attacks from just one dosage, brain cell damage that can produced Parkinson’s-like symptoms, and nerve cell damage that can produce strokes if taken over a period of time – have been rampant in Major League Baseball since the 1950s. Many Hall-of-Fame baseball players, including Aaron, have admitted to taking speed during the season, yet not one of these players are castigated as is Bonds and his alleged PED use. Again, just that alone would stop most “right-minded” people.