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Probably mixed, considering that 24% of people approved of the job Dick Nixon was doing as President during the week he was forced to resign. People often think whatever they want to think without any regard to the facts at all.
I'm a Giants fan who completely soured on Barry Bonds after Balco and other revelations. He was never likable from the beginning, but he was a great player and wasn't a cheat, so he was tolerable. In a way, Bonds getting caught finally allowed me to do what I probably always wanted to do, dismiss him entirely.
My attitude did not seem to be shared by the fans at AT&T who cheered Bonds all the way through what I saw as a shameful episode, his breaking of Henry Aaron's record. Even on the road, where most seemed to be booing Barry, there would still be pockets of Bonds fans cheering for him.
I expect it will be the same for Rodriguez. Yankee fans will love him as long as he keeps hitting. And some non Yankee fans will still root for him as well because, well, I guess that is a matter of personalities.
People get rehabilitated over the years, new generations of fans come along and they are less offended because the malfeasance didn't happen on their watch. It was interesting to me to see how George Steinbrenner became sort of warm and fuzzy toward his latter years, and even more so after he died. If you were a baseball fan in the '70's and '80's, then you know first hand what a king hell, self glorifying, publicity loving d-bag Steinbrenner was for two decades.
So who knows? Maybe down the road there will be some Shoeless Joe pops out of the cornfield style sentimental surge for the whole PEDs generation.
I would boo, but to be honest my boos would be towards Bud Selig for not being tough on PED's from the start. A-Roid would not be here pushing 660 if Selig wasn't conveniently looking the other way for years.
GrandStander, I think the Cubs fans (of which I am) are the opposite of those Giants fans who still cheered Bonds. Sosa is mostly reviled by the Cubs, Cubs fans, and the media in Chicago. Sure, there are some who will wax poetic about the '98 home run race with McGuire, Sosa's MVP, and the 2003 playoff run. However, since he was found out as a PED user, claimed dumb in front of congress, showed up at Wrigley with a corked bat on top of the PED's, and then walked out on the team the last game of his career.... he doesn't get much love in the windy city.
It's sad to a point. He was a great talent without the roids. However, I also do not feel bad for him either. He brought it all on himself.
He tied Mays tonight in Fenway, so he was booed for his effort.
Yankee teammates compromised...they didn't rush out of the dugout to greet him at home plate, but when he got back to the dugout they high fived and back slapped like they would for any home run.
I was at that game last night. Regardless of all of the circumstances surrounding this milestone, whether is be A-Rod's performance enhancing drug issue or anything else, it was a classic baseball moment.
As A-Rod came out of the dugout to go to the batters box, the boos began. As he walked to the plate, the boos rang louder. Once in the batters box, the boos were impressively loud. It almost felt like a set-up - pinch hitting, booing - perfect.
Tie game 2-2. In the face of the controversy and booing, and in the park and playing the Yankees biggest historical rivals, he cracked #660 and rounded the bases. Just as a fan of baseball (I am a Red Sox season ticket holder), I could not help but marvel in it.
Didn't have the camera out, but had a perfect view from the my seats of the home run into the monster seats. (pic from the seats). I didn't take a lot of pictures, so in a way I was disappointed I didn't catch a photo of the moment.
Last edited by metalmancpa; 05-02-2015 at 08:29 AM..
Alex Rodriguez has been one of the great players of the past few generations. His overall tools at SS were better than those of Jeter, but he volunteered to go play 3B instead when he arrived in NYC. It's so interesting now that the Yankees will try not to pay the "milestone bonus" that they negotiated into his contract back in 2007. What a disgraceful indictment of the two-faced lords of the sport.
Bonds of course is perhaps the preeminent power, speed, and defense triple-threat combination in baseball history. And look what's happened to him.
Alex Rodriguez has been one of the great players of the past few generations. His overall tools at SS were better than those of Jeter, but he volunteered to go play 3B instead when he arrived in NYC. It's so interesting now that the Yankees will try not to pay the "milestone bonus" that they negotiated into his contract back in 2007. What a disgraceful indictment of the two-faced lords of the sport.
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Rodriguez voided the promotional value of the bonus home runs by getting caught cheating for the second time. The Yankees are taking the perfectly sensible point of view that because of these actions by Rodriguez, he reduced the value the Yankees would obtain from the milestone events, defeating the purpose of the bonus payments.
It was Rodriguez who was the disgrace, the Yankees are behaving like any normal organization would when they have been financially damaged by a contracting party.
Your posts seems to suggest that Rodriguez and Bonds are somehow or other victims. Do you not understand yet? We were the victims. We, the public, were defrauded by these players. Continuing to cheer for the person who has cheated and lied to you may make sense to you, but I regard it as foolish.
The entire story -- involving Rodriguez, Bonds, and to a small degree, even Mays himself, says something unflattering, not so much about the game itself, but about the peddlers of schlock and hype who exploit it.
There is a physical and biological limit to human performance, and records wil not be broken continuously. Developments within the game might artificailly prolong or retard "performance" with regard to some "standards" (Anyone else recall the ".300 hitters are doomed" controversy of 30-40 years ago?) but the human body does not change, save over a time frame too long to be of importance.
Willie Mays spent the last year or two of his career "playing for numbers", and that sometimes led to some sad sights. Mays never stopped tyring, and the man himself has regained most of the stature he has earned and deserved. But at the low point of another of baseball's sporadic "moments of shame" -- the drug scandals of 1984-85 -- stories surfaced of Mays keeping a powerful stikmulant he supposedly called "red juice" in his locker. We forgave and forgot out of a knowledge that this was not the "real" Wiile Mays, but I shudder to think how things might have turned out if the story had first surfaced in the present-day media environment.
Baseball has made a number of efforts to clean up its act, with mixed success, and in fairness the "underside" ofthe game has always been there; likely always will be in some forms. But the media need to place more emphasis on the consistency and hopefully, the integrity of the game itself.
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