710 ESPN's "SMOG" - Steve Mason's Blog

Our Long National Nightmare is Over!

Finally, the obnoxious travelling circus known as the Barry Bonds home run derby is over. Tonight at AT&T Park, Bonds hit a 3-2 Mike Bacsik pitch outta the yard for steroid-tainted homer #756. Now he Barry can fade away like the grumpy old man he is (at least until the Feds indict him for perjury in September).

Bud Selig and Henry Aaron weren't there. Good for them. They know that this "dog and pony show" has been a complete charade, and they're smart to steer clear of it.

Selig is preparing (ironically) to meet with former Senator George Mitchell, who is planning to release a final report on the steroid era in baseball very soon. Selig's absence means that when Barry is indicted, there won't be any video of a smiling commish shaking hands with a future felon.

Meanwhile, Aaron has more class in his little finger than Barry will ever possess. Hank dealt with racial taunts and death threats while he was chasing Babe Ruth. It's an interesting sign of progress that Barry has been the abuser of fans and reporters through most of his career instead of the abusee as Aaron was.

The vast majority of the country should be congratulated. Barry didn't "get away with it." Here's a killer montage of editorial cartoons, sight gags and actual fans with actual signs at ballparks where Barry has played the last few years.

As a baseball fan, it's all a little sad. Those numbers....61 and 755....used to mean something special, magical and even holy. No more.

What's Barry's reward? He'll be a villain for the rest of his days....except maybe in San Francisco.

What's San Francisco's reward? A last place finish and years of rebuilding because of the short-sighted decision to keep this bobo on the roster. Hope it was worth it Peter Magowan.

Now, if only MLB and the Players Union would get serious about real steroid testing. Same with the NFL. Their testing is just as comically ineffective. Somehow, I don't think that Selig and Goodell want to seriously deal with the issue of performance enhancing drugs, but I can hope.

Steroid Awareness Day at Dodger Stadium

Last night, I was at Dodger Stadium for what turned out to be a terrific Dodger comeback win. With Barry in town, even a press pass doesn't guarantee a seat, but luckily for me, my friends at Warner Bros had a suite, so I was at the game in style.

The Dodger were 5 outs away from another loss to the hated Giants. After Rafael Furcal and Juan Pierre got on in the 8th, Luis Gonzalez hit a 2-run single and Nomar Garciapara followed with a 2-run bomb, and the Dodgers win 6-4. Bonds was 0-3 with a walk. There was a fly ball out on a 3-2 pitch from Mark Hendrickson in the 2nd, an infield dribbler in the 4th, and a soft liner grabbed by Juan Pierre in a great diving catch in the 6th. Then in the 8th with first base open, Jonathan Broxton fell behind 2-0 before the Dodgers decided to put him on intentionally.

Bonds isn't exactly scary right now. He's hitless in his last 19 at bats against the Dodgers, and he finished the month of July with a dreadful .186 batting average. He's a broken-down old man and hardly looks like a guy about to shoot down Henry Aaron's all-time record.

Dusty Baker was on the show yesterday at 5:45p. I'm not sure why, but we totally let Dusty wriggle off the hook without any tough questions, but we did. He's in a unique position to comment on Barry because he managed him more games than anybody, plus he was a teammate of Aaron's. I asked Baker how he felt about Hank not being on hand when Barry breaks the record. He said, "Hank's in his 70's, and he doesn't like to travel." OK. I'll buy that. Later in his dodgy answer, he said, "Hank is in Puerto Rico right now doing some clinics." Puerto Rico seems like a long way to go for somebody who doesn't like to travel.

I would have followed-up with something more agressive, but we ran out of time. I still think we blew it by not going after the guy.

The Dodgers are all over the board on this Barry Bonds steroid story. Yesterday, Franks McCourt told us that Dodger fans should be above booing. Then he said, "I hate the Giants!" Then we found out that the Dodgers have been confiscating t-shirts that say "Boycott Barry" with a hitter holding a syringe like a bat (here's a link to the website for the Boycott Barry people.) Now, the Dodgers sponsored a steroid awareness clinic for kids at Chavez Ravine today.

Talk about mixed messages. Don't boo Barry, but hate the Giants. No shirts that say "Boycott Barry," but rub salt in the steroid wound with an awareness clinic. C'mon Dodgers! Make up your mind.

I'm a big fan of Frank McCourt, but....

First off, it's a new day for the SMOG. This page looks a little different, but I am now able to post more often, and I can publish my ramblings without anybody's help. That means I'll be writing more. If I get an idea at 3am, after I get home from the clubs, I can string together some thoughts.

So I crack open the LA Times today (actually, I logged onto the LA Times website), and I red that Frank McCourt wants Dodger fans to be civil, and he thinks that booing Barry Bonds is the wrong thing to do.

C'mon Frank. You know I'm a McCourt fan, but Dodger fans should be fans that stand for something - fans of principal. I don't endorse throwing things on the field, or shouting obscenities, or making obscene gestures. There still needs to be a sense ofr decorum. But, no Dodger fan should cheer Barry Bonds.

First of all, as I've been saying for years, Barry Bonds has admitted that he used steroids. He also claims that he didn't know they were steroids. We're expected to believe that he just rubbed "the creme" and "the clear" on his body without knowing what they were.

There's also absolutely no way to know that, when Barry steps into the batter's box tonight, he'll be "clean." We spoke to Patrick Arnold, the chemist who created the now infamous "clear" last week on The Big Show, and this guy verified what I've always said. There's no test for what Barry would be taking right now.

The way steroid testing works is that when an athlete pees in a cup, the testers are looking for certain by-products of known steroids. If there is a "designer steroid," as THG was, there's no way to test for it because the chemists don't know what the by-products are. That means that if Selig made Bonds get tested tonight, he could be on some steroid compound... say THB or TLC or BLT... and Barry would test negative for steroids. Also, Human Growth Hormone can only be tested by blood, and baseball's testing only allows urine testing, so Barry could also be on HGH.

If you're willing to cheat once, why would you suddenly stop cheating... especially if the chances of being caught are 0.00%.

When I hear people argue that Barry has never tested positive for steroids, it demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of the issue. In the case of Bonds, a "designer steroid" junkie, we don't know what he's using, so we have to make desicions based on other "by-products." When you're personal trainer goes to jail for dealing steroids, when your name is mentioned in document after document seized from Balco, and when a Federal Grand Jury is ready to indict you for perjury, those by-products are enough to decide whether you cheated.

So Mr. McCourt, it's every Dodger fans responsibility to express their disapproval for who Barry is and what he stands for.