Texsox

Depends on how you judge the movie.

He far exceeded what I expected, which tells you how little I expected. I felt it was wrong to have an owner as the commissioner. I felt there needed to be some balance. However, overall, his ownership interest was not much of a hindrance or asset in the job he did. The game is better than now that when he took over, although it went through a period where it was worse. In the annals of sport commissioners he was no Pete Roselle, but he wasn't a total stiff.

Short form summary of the arguments that have been used in this thread and elsewhere: Pro Bonds argument: If you accept one form of cheating, you must accept all forms of cheating. My response: Different rules have different consequences based on severity. To punish all the rules the same would either mean no penalties or the harshest penalties, no matter what. Our society has never operated that way. A fair punishment for point shaving or throwing a game is a lifetime suspension. Should we also apply that to throwing a spitball? Pro Bonds: If you have ever cheated, no matter how small, you cannot hold Bonds accountable. My response: Again the assumption would be that all cheating or rules breaking is the same. Someone who shoots an 85 and turns in an 84 in a fun game with friends for bragging rights, is on a much different level than someone playing on the PGA tour and turning in a bogus scorecard and winning millions. Someone playing poker in their home is different than someone operating a casino. Someone corking a bat and hitting a few home runs is different than someone using a corked bat for half their career. Pro Bonds: Everyone was cheating. My response: No, some where not. Pro Bonds: He was already the greatest that ever played. My response: Perhaps that is true, but then why did he use steroids? I wish we could fairly compare his stats to other players who did not use PEDs. Clearly he would have been in the discussion. Too bad we have to predict what effects his drug usage had. Pro Bonds: He still had to hit the ball. The didn't really help his stats. My response: Then why did he use them and why are they called performance enhancing drugs? Pro Bonds: It wasn't against the rules at the time. My response: They hid it from everyone, including their clean team mates. They lied and claimed it was supplements, better workout regimes, etc. They knew it was wrong. Pro Bonds: It wasn't in the rules book. My response: Either is slitting the tires of a player's car so they can't get to the game, doesn't mean it is allowed or should be tolerated. And my final point, (unless someone plows some new pro PED ground), is this. Unlike all the other rules infractions that have been employed in baseball, this was unenforceable by the umpires. They couldn't pick up the ball and see the foreign substance. Further, the affect and effects were greater than any other form of cheating. That puts this on a different scale than other forms of cheating. Also, in defense of Bonds and other superstar players, is perhaps the grossest miscarriage in all this, is that the teams and league management, those people who the game was entrusted to, allowed this to flourish. I am not placing all the blame on the players, Bonds included. In fact, in many ways I believe management deserves a much bigger black eye than they are receiving. They made millions from this and seem to be getting a free ride.

Blues Brothers better than Animal House?

Zero chance anyone will forget that line.

Being escorted can happen when you quit. It is good protection for all parties concerned when there are sensitive documents involved. Usually if the person has quit, they have already taken everything they wanted. Most likely, based on what you wrote, he quit in the midst of an argument with the AD. In that case, an escort would have been advised.

QUOTE (knightni @ Nov 28, 2009 -> 12:02 PM) That's still opinion and hearsay. There is no concrete proof. No concrete proof? That players hid it?

Using the premise of everyone has cheated or broke a rule, should we stop enforcing all rules? If we accept speeding five over, we should accept speeding twenty-five over? As a society when we find people breaking the rules we hold them accountable. It is a real stretch to claim that because the judge sped on his way to court that day, he shouldn't be allowed to convict that embezzler. Your claims of we accept this little stuff so we must accept this bigger stuff would mean to severely punish the bigger stuff we would have to severely punish the smaller stuff. Does that really make sense? Your example would mean the employees of Enron who made a few photocopies for their personal use (stealing office supplies) should not b**** when their retirement was stolen through company fraud and corruption. Correcting that seeming discrepancy would mean stealing those copies or a pen should mean long jail time. Certainly you can see why society has different levels of punishment based on the severity of the rule or law. The punishment varies from quiet acceptance (a few copies, a few paper clips) to long jail time (fraud, embezzlement). Same with the difference between scuffing a ball and taking steroids.

QUOTE (SoxAce @ Nov 28, 2009 -> 11:42 PM) I gotta ask you Tex cause this has been a debate you've had over the years on this board and I just read it, and never get into it cause it's not my business. Have you ever cheated, just alittle, in anything in your life? I was under the impression that everyone does something to give them an edge to get by whether it's copying something in school, spitball/tar in a sport, eating junk food in a diet, giving themselves a higher score in a family board game etc... This is more or less an off topic question, especially considering unless the persons name is Jesus Christ, I've personally never come across (or read) a person who has never cheated once in their lives at something even a professional athlete who gets ridiculed because he's a millionaire. I don't care if the MLB wipes out Bonds year 2000 numbers till the last game he played (I think 2007 or 2008) before he left. The man is still a hall of famer. You can't say that about guys like Sosa, McGwire, Palmiero, etc.. etc.. This man is one of the best players to ever put on a uniform. I personally hope the MLB does something to that extent to show the older players especially, and the fans that PEDs are not the answer. Even if they do that, Bonds still has a first place ballot waiting in Cooperstown. The same can be also said about Pete Rose. The man is a sure fire hall of famer, never did PEDs, his numbers are all legit. But he cheated the game by gambling when he was a manager, not a player. But it is still against the rules. People would still vote him in, and rightfully so. Hell we got hall of famers in Cooperstown RIGHT NOW, who cheated one way or another in this game and got away with it. The sayings go "If you don't get caught, it's not cheating" or "If your not cheating, your not trying" can apply. God knows how many baseballs Wilhelm, Spawn, Perry, etc.. were doctored up when they played. Hell even you hear a hall of famer(s) like Schmidt and even "pine tar" Brett say that if they had PEDs when they played that they probably would have done it to gain an edge and increase production is fairly telling in my eyes. Hell Canseco already said that there's one active hall of famer who did PEDs that is already in Cooperstown, and we may never know who that is. Fair question. First of all, I do not see it as hypocritical to believe that there is a hierarchy of cheating and breaking of the rules. Some things are worse than others. As I noted, go yell at an ump and you may get a warning, you may get thrown out of the game, or you may get suspended. In real life get caught with a joint, get a warning, get caught with a kilo, probably not a warning, possibly jail time. Should society have the same punishment for every law that is broken? I doubt anyone here would seriously advocate that. So why are there different punishments? Because the severity of the rule/law is different. So if you lump eating junk food on a diet with taking steroids, read no further. You will never understand the rest. The issue becomes where to place steroids on this list. It is my belief that steroids are worse than scuffing a ball, or corking a bat. In almost all other rules infractions, the ump has the ability to detect the cheating and stop it. With steroids, there is no way for the ump to detect it. Also, a player on steroids is cheating 100% of the time. In Bond's case, you can't even compare his cheating and non cheating results for the latter part of his career. And that really is sad. Imagine if Bonds had not juiced. His stats would be lower, but we would be arguing if he is the greatest based on results that were achieved under about the same conditions as every player in the past. Instead we must first decide how inflated his results are based on his drug use. That is not good for the game. It also seems wrong to reward a player because they found a superior way to cheat. Games are defined by rules. When you invent a game, the first thing you do is make up the rules. Try and play a game where there are no rules. If two people are playing by two different sets of rules, they are not playing the same game. I find it hard to believe that at the end of an athletic contest, some of you here are happy to say, we cheated better than the other team, versus, we played better than the other team. I find it hard to believe that anyone who has played a sport and won, fairly, would find any satisfaction in cheating to win. We will never know what Bonds non cheating results would have been. I agree it certainly would probably have been enough to warrant Hall of Fame induction. However, we will never know. We want to celebrate someone who pissed on the game of baseball. We want to hold him up in the hall as the type of player that everyone should aspire to? No thanks. If the game was filled by people who are all cheating, the game becomes meaningless. If the attention is not on improving performance on the field with practice, ability, and hard work, but in laboratories and which chemist can create a better player, why not stop playing humans and just play a video game? Imagine this, Wow! that ball went 600 feet! What do you think he used? Clear? I hear there is a new bat that will add 100 feet and looks just like a real one. No I hear they broke into the storage room and doctored the balls. These guys are breaking all the rules! This is our greatest team ever!! As far as my cheating, the only time I can remember breaking the rules, was during my Club's match play championship. In the semi final round I took relief from an embedded ball between a water hazard and the green, out of site of my opponent. Later, I realized I was probably within the boundary of the hazard and not entitled to relief. I brought it to the attention of the club pro, we visited the site, and I was right, I should not have taken relief. However, the pro informed me that once the results were posted, they were official, and there was no way to go back and award the victory to my opponent. I lost in the finals 8 and 7, I just did not want to be there. I may have beaten my opponent without the illegal drop, I was ahead at that point, but we will never know. That hole may have changed the momentum and he may have played better. I cannot believe some here would adopt the attitude of, too bad, he didn't catch you, you won and that's all that counts. I play to see if I am the better player that day, not if I can cheat better than my opponent. I'd rather practice playing than practice cheating. Fans are upset when a human officiating error is the difference between winning and losing, how can fans feel good when cheating is the difference? I wonder if those that advocate for cheating would say, we lost the championship because the other team was cheating. But I don't care. Cheating is OK in my book and if they cheated better than us, they deserve the championship. Some may enjoy hearing, awesome bit of cheating out there today. I thought you were going to lose, but who would have thought they would forget to keep on eye on you. Great switch of the balls and having that extra player run out there in the final seconds was brilliant! I guess they will spend less time practicing and more time learning the easy way.

2:30 AM, and not drunk, makes this an interesting scenario. I've played baseball as a leisurely activity, but it is still a sport. I've played pick up basketball games as a leisure activity, but it is still a sport.

X-actly where I thought we would be. And the Good Ol' Boys were playing at a bar in Wisconsin IIRC

QUOTE (longshot7 @ Nov 28, 2009 -> 01:15 PM) All I care is wins, by any means necessary. No you will not convince me that cheating is OK. No, it is not as bad as manslaughter, you brought up speeding and stealing office supplies, and if that is OK, then steroids is fine also. I elaborated and showed how we've always ha d a sliding scale. Go ahead and cheat and have someone read it to you. Bonds and the other players hid their usage and denied to this day. Why? When someone cheats you out of something that is rightfully yours, perhaps a promotion, money, whatever, I hope you have the same feeling and congratulate the person who cheated you. I'm not going to cheat my way to a victory, but if you can live with that, so be it. Millions of people cheering for you, thinking you played by the rules, but really, you just f***ed over the honest guy. That makes you a dishonest person. I guess that is how you were raised. Shoot a five, write down a four. Cork a bat. Slip an ace off the bottom of the deck. Then you are the man! Try and convince yourself you are a better golfer, baseball player, or poker player than the guy who played by the rules. Once you start lying, it is probably easy enough to convince yourself you are really better than the poor sucker who plays it honest. But when you change the rules, you change the sport. If Bonds really thought it was OK he'd be arguing just like you. But in this debate, I'll take honesty over deceit. If you believe that is holier than thou, so be it. But there are a lot more honest people in this world that cheaters. I hope one day you won't have to cheat to win. My guess is you never tried. In the end, you are a cheater. Fortunantly society doesn't honor that very much. Not too many parades and respect for cheaters.

Quick question. If Bonds and the other players didn't think they were doing anything wrong, why did they hide it from their teammates? Why didn't one stand up and say, hey this isn't banned, so I'm taking steroids? Why didn't they just go to the team physician and ask for steroids?

QUOTE (Quinarvy @ Nov 28, 2009 -> 02:29 AM) Yea, but the thing is, can you be penalized for something not banned (though wasn't it illegal in the US? I don't know), and I think thats what all the people refer to when they say he did 'roids. Also, McGwire has one of the crappiest brothers ever. That seems to be a good question. So I will add my own questions, if it was OK, why did guys hide it? Why didn't one, just one, come out and say, hey this isn't banned so I'm using steroids? They all hid it. Many hid it from their teammates. That tells me a lot about whether the drug users thought they were doing something wrong or not. A person's answer to that will determined whether they think someone should be held accountable for their drug use.

Some of you seem to be confused about the value that society places in rules. If you remember back to middle school and the preamble to the Constitution, the framers wrote to "establish justice". That was the early seeds of a system about rules. They were most likely hypocrites. Later, after writing the Constitution, they began adding ten amendments; collectively calling them the Bill of Rights. Half of these, specifically the 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th, are specific to our system of rules and how we will determine who breaks them and what the penalty will be. Again, these were probably crafted by people you will call hypocrites. In the following 222 years, this system of enforcing our rules and punishing those that break them, have grown. A profession has risen that will interpret the rules for you, in case you cannot understand the differences. They are called lawyers, and you will find them in every phone book. Warning, many of these may be hypocrites as well. They can, for example, explain why being caught with an ounce of marijuana is not as serious as being caught with five kilos of marijuana. Amazingly, some people seem to think this should be treated the same or it would be hypocritical. Now we even have entire buildings devoted to adjudicating the rules. These buildings, we call them courts, are filled with hypocrites. In fact, it would seem that the only part of the system that is not filled with hypocrites are the buildings we call prisons. There you will find people that cannot see the difference between breaking a minor rule and a major law. You will find those that believe it is fun to break rules there as well. So yes, we are a nation of hypocrites who insist on enforcing some rules and not others. Of applying different punishments for different rules. Yes, at times, it may seem arbitrary. Moreover, some may find this holier than thou. For those people, perhaps a trip to the Barberry Coast and Somalia where there are no rules would be better. Far less hypocrisy to deal with.

QUOTE (Jordan4life @ Nov 28, 2009 -> 07:40 AM) I just smoked a blunt the size of Bartolo Colon's right titty. And that's illegal, obviously. How am I any different than Bonds? Fortunately others in society figured it out for you. Even though you cannot see the difference between breaking two different laws, smarter people can. That is why murder may get you the death penalty and assault gets you a long jail sentence. That is why using drugs in baseball gets you a longer suspension than a fight. That is why arguing with an ump may get you thrown out of the game, hitting the ump gets you suspended. Different infractions yield different punishments based on the severity of the rule broken. That is why you are different than Bonds. Or is it still unclear? Holier than though to believe in rules? OK, then believing in breaking rules makes you what? I guess our prisons are full of non hypocrites.

QUOTE (longshot7 @ Nov 28, 2009 -> 12:53 AM) Well, it wouldn't be CHEATING it they threw out the rule book now, would it? Half the fun is breaking the rules just to break them. I'm not going to stretch this metaphor as far as it's been stretched by others. All I'm saying is ends justify means. To win at sports, sometimes if it's necessary to cheat, it's justified. That's my opinion, and all I'm saying. And congrats on being such a good driver, but that's not what I said. To see people harp on players trying to get a competitive edge while breaking the law in their own ways (speeding, cheating on taxes, stealing office supplies - even while not being caught) is hypocrisy. And I'd wager that 90% of Americans have cheated on SOMETHING in their life - and to blame people they don't know for something so trivial, it's just hypocrisy. Maybe this isn't you specifically, but if steroids bother someone THAT much, they should look at their own lives before casting stones. I find it objectionable when the skill of the players takes a back seat to which team can cheat better. Perhaps you will enjoy sitting there seeing which team is better at cheating, I'd rather see which team is better at baseball. And baseball, like all sports, is defined by the rule book. I'd rather see the achievements and failures of men playing on a level playing field. To see which man or woman is better that day. Not who found a better way to cheat. How special would Buehrle's perfect game be if we discovered he found a substance to rub on the ball that made it impossible to hit? How special would it be if we discovered the other team was paid to not get a base runner? You claim it would be fun. I pray that 100% of the rest of fans would not find it fun. Your argument basically lumps driving a few miles over the limit, walking out of the office with a pen from work, with all other rules and law infractions. In other words zero tolerance for breaking the rules, but 100% acceptance. To claim that if you drive 5 miles over the limit it somehow then makes breaking every other rule ok, is silly. There is a difference between speeding five or ten over and reckless driving. There is a difference between taking a pen home from work and stealing a truck load of supplies from Office Depot. Believing that 80% of your trip expenses were deductible instead of 50% is different than not filing or working off the books. That is why we have a sliding scale of punishment. That is why vehicular manslaughter lands you in jail and speeding five over gets you a warning. That is why it is not hypocritical to believe that cheating is not OK. The issue with steroids, which is different between corking a bat or throwing a spit ball, is there was no way to detect it on the field. At least with the others there was a chance that an observant ump could catch these guys. With steroids they could stand there with their artificially enlarged muscle mass, shrunk testicles, and big heads and the umps have no recourse. So even accepting your belief that a little cat and mouse between the umps and players is fun, this was not the case.

Chicago, number 3 on my list, will not make the ST top 50.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/US/11/27/soldier.suicide/index.html Seems so obvious to me that this is a bad policy. Write the letters, they are for the families.

yesterday I thought a few more of my rock picks would bein the top 10, not anymore. Too many metal heads here.

we will probably be doing a little shopping at the outlet mall with 100,000 Mexican nationals. God bless them for stimulating our economy instead of theirs.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Dec 25, 2008 -> 04:44 PM) Applause again for fair knight bump

QUOTE (Heads22 @ Nov 26, 2009 -> 07:13 PM) Aggies up 7-0, wasting no time. Longhorns already marching, though. Could be a fun, high scoring game. You called that one. This A&M team, with all the freshmen, will be scary good the next three seasons or so.

facial lacerations and out of the hospital according to the town's mayor who probably stopped by for an autograph.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Nov 27, 2009 -> 02:14 PM) I hope you are young and dumb and not too old to change your opinion on this. Do you cheat on all your school assignments or did you at one time? Congratulations on your diploma. If you have a kid who runs cross country (heaven help the kid, that sport sucks) would you condone him hiding in the brush and waiting for the group to return and have him sprint out front and win the race at the end if nobody could see? In football do you condone him at the bottom of the pile smashing the other team's star player in the nuts or poke his eyes to get an advantage as long as he's not seen? To save some money do you cheat and switch the tags on items? Do you cheat on the wife after your honeymoon. May be a lot of fun, but it's not right. Cheating is wrong. There is something wrong with cheating even if it translates to results. Accomplishing something by cheating really stains the accomplishment. If you don't see that, I don't know what to think. That said, like somebody pointed out, we don't need Minoso back and we don't need Bonds. Both are too old. Of course I agree with you. Perhaps it takes achieving something without cheating for some people to understand the difference. It was nice when I won my flight in my Club Championship, people knew my handicap was fair and I played by the rules. I could not imagine standing there knowing I cheated in any way. But clearly some people can stand there smiling, as if they accomplished more than the person who played by the rules. That seems about as fake as paying someone to applaud. And Greg, I ran CC in college and high school. I loved it. No b.s. bounces of a ball. Hard work pays off.