You Can't Handle The Truth

Finally The Bender has come back to the blogosphere!

I've missed a lot over the last month, and I'll take the time at some point to catch up on all of it, but right now I'm gonna focus on Major League Baseball and Barry Bonds.

I'm gonna come at this from all angles, first things first, how do I feel about Barry Bonds having the record? It really doesn't bother me. In some ways it just how ridiculous it is to compare different eras to one another. Baseball is the sport where the analysts have the audacity to pretend that nothing has changed. They still held tight to Babe Ruth's career marks and ignored the fact that African Americans weren't allowed to play in the major leagues before 1947. Maybe Josh Gibson is the real all-time home run king, but we'll never know. The point is that it's really just a number, Hank Aaron still had the same career he ever had. In some ways maybe we'll all benefit from this event because we won't have to hear about every record that ever existed and we don;t have to pretend that hitting a 310 foot homer off Cy Young was the same as hitting a 400 foot homer off of Casey Fossum. I hope Barry Bonds ends up with over 800 home runs and the Peter Gammons' of the world have to cry themselves to sleep every night knowing that the game of baseball if only for one moment was actually flawed.

The most disturbing part of Bonds' record run is the fact that it's quickly become one of the most racially divisive issues since the OJ trial. The truth is that I don't necessarily get it, to me it seems obvious that Bonds used steroids, and even if every other player of this era used steroids, that doesn;t change the fact that Bonds has admitted to using (if only by accident.) I was talking to an African American gentleman in a bar the night that Barry tied the all-time mark of 755, and while he did give some incites into succesful marriages, (apparently it involves whipped cream and strawberries.) We also had to engage in a very awkward conversation about how Barry was a victim, and you don;t see anyone going after Roger Clemens, and I nodded in agreement, not only on the issues of Barry being a victim and Roger Clemens not being under scrutiny, but also on the positive effects of whipped cream and strawberries on a marriage. I wasn;t going to get into a debate about Barry in a bar because for some reason it way too serious of an issue to this gentleman. I don;t understand the vitriol on either side, why would people get so worked up over Barry Bonds in any way. The truth I'll never understand this issue and I'm giving up on understanding it even quicker than I made the similar decision back in 1994 with Orenthal James.

The second most disturbing issue for me has been Bud Selig's "hard stance." A lot of people in the media have been applauding or supporting Bud's choice not attend all of Barry's games as he went for the record, after all he had made a "Herculean effort" to see it but attending more than five games was way out of the question. Selig's stance here has been ridiculously hypocritical. It's not quite up there with the closeted homosexual preachers who condemn homosexuality, but it's right up there. (On a side note, 300 came out on DVD this week and it's definitely worth checking out.) Anyway, Selig sat by and watched as steroids took hold of his beloved game and now he refuses to reap what he sewed. You can't stand by and let steroids and homeruns hotshot your league back to popularity and then become indignant when ones of the many steroid users you helped promote takes over your record book. Guess what Bud, you have no right to take a stand now, this is the modern day Faust, bud made his deal with the devil but now he wants his soul back, it's too late.

This brings me to my theory as to why so many people hold such anger for Barry. He is the ultimate symbol of how Steroids took over Major League Baseball for over a ten year period, and maybe even longer than we ever imagined. Jose Canseco won the MVP in 1988 because of steroids, Ken Caminiti won his steroid fueled MVP in 1996. These are just the players who have admitted it. And the baseball lovers are scrambling to cut this epidemic off at the pass so they can claim it was an anomoly. Peter Gammons has been the worst offender. I've heard him on the radio chastising a fan who had the gaul to claim that Jason Giambi was using steroids again during his resurgence last season. Well, Peter, I know that Giambi's character is beyond reproach, but maybe just maybe he was cheating again. And these same defenders all applauded Rafael Palmeiro for proving he wasn;t on steroids by taking the offensive in front of congress, but then Palmeiro got caught a few months later. Of course Palmeiro was just another anomoly. In fact I'm sure Peter Gammons is still convinced that only the players who've been caught by the new steroid testing are the players who used during their careers. They ignore the fact that Barry Bonds was never caught.

Like I said before, I don't care if Bonds used steroids, but cut the crap, I'd say that more than half of the league used steroids at one point. So don't tell me that the problem has been solved, and don't pretend that it wasn't an epidemic. Steroids still rule baseball, and if we can accept that we can sit back and enjoy the games, we can each pretend that our favorite team is the only one without cheaters. But if we're going to accuse Bonds we just have be prepared to accept it when we hear the whole truth about what has gone on for the last 20 years.

So Sad to Say Goodbye

Time for another exciting edition of The Bender, and sadly this will probably be the last time that I get to talk about little Sanjaya Malakar. Sanjaya, the boy who single-handedly saved this season of American Idol. He was like William Hung, Kelly Pickler, Kevin Covais and Justin Guarini all rolled into one (ok, maybe not Kelly Pickler.) Every week he would bring something new and exciting to the show, mostly through his hair styles, but also with his poor singing and his ability to take in Simon's attacks without losing his innocence. The aforementioned Covais was doing great last year until he decided to fight back, as if he actually thought his singing warranted his presence on the show. Anyway, I don;t know if I'll watch this week's Idol, between their constant patting of themselves on the back over the idea that they might give a little something to the less fortunate and with Sanjaya out of the picture I may need to take this week off. I actually felt really bad for Sanjaya when he got voted off, he seemed so crushed, it just reminded me that he's only seventeen. When I was seventeen I couldn;t have possibly handled the beating that he's been taking publicly, he even was the victim of a very unfunny parody on Saturday Night Live a couple weeks back. I'm all for comedy, but when it isn;t even that funny you might as well give the kid a break.

Before I get off the subject of American Idol, I want to say that I must be getting very cynical in my old age. I can;t help but view this whole Idols gives back as a giant co-opting of the people in need. I feel like the People at American Idol are going to make a ton of money for themselves while trumpeting the nice chunk of change that they're donating to young people in need both in Africa and in The US. Granted, this money wouldn't be going to these people who definitely need the help, but let us not forget the impetus for this show is not completely altruistic. At the very least they are making the American Idol brand more profitable, but more than likely they will profit off this individual act of "charity" as well. I'm tired in general of these people who have more money than they could spend in ten lifetimes (and that's taking into account inflation) but they can't stop kissing their own asses for making a large donation. By the way I wanted to congratulate Oprah for fully funding one school in Africa. I may have given away a larger portion of my income the time I gave Mr. Butch my change outside of Store 24 last month.

On a totally unrelated note, I watched the Jonestown documentary on PBS last week, and it was an incredible story. I've never been a fan of documentaries, I've always suspected that it was because I'm not very bright, but anyway, this may have been the most enthralling hour and a half of television watching I ever experienced. While many may construe that as faint praise but remember that I've watched every episode of Lost the last three years, so I take my television very seriously. So I guess this is my recommendation for the week, put that documentary on top of your Netflix queue. I might try to get the rights to this story so I can turn it into an Oscar winning flick, I know I could get Kevin Spacey to play Jim Jones in hope of winning an Oscar, this is why I should be in the movie business, there's a fortune to be made here. But I guess the studios would rather re-make Rear Window or put out crap like Vacancy.

One last note about new movies, it seems the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie is turning out to be a huge flop. This is terrible news, not because I'm necessarily a huge fan of the show, but this definitely means it'll harder to get a full movie of The Venture Bros. Which would be a great choice for the next Cartoon Network show to make it to the theaters. I sometimes feel like ATHF has trouble filling up a full 15 minute show without boring me, so I don;t know who thought it would make a good movie, but Venture Brothers has continuing plot lines that almost fill out a movie in its current half hour format. While we're on the subject, go out and buy the second season of Venture Bros. It just come out on DVD this week. So that's my second DVD recommendation for this week, I might have a legitimite DVD addiction going on, I've spent the last week trying to figure out if I lost my copy of Ordinary People or if I just never bought one, this has to be some sort of sign.

Wanted to comment on a couple sports stories from the last week. First, Drew Bledsoe retired, he never really got his due here in the Boston area. He was a damn good quarterback for the Patriots for a nine years, and aside from Tom Brady he was the most important player in franchise history. Bledsoe isn't quite up to Hall of Fame standards, although now that Warren Moon is in there, he wouldn't be the worst QB to be in. Hopefully the Pats fans will finally appreciate him for all that he did, if not he'll just have to go home and roll around in his piles and piles of money, Drew retires having the highest career earnings of any player in NFL history.

The other sports story I wanted to comment on is the official beginning of the baseball season, the first Sox-Yankees series. The story of the series through two games, aside from the Sox winning, has to be A-Rod's incredible start. He seems to have slimmed down and added a good amount of muscle in his legs. I remember about eight years ago when another superstar re-dedicated himself through off-season conditioning, that stars name was Barry Bonds. I'm not gonna come out and accuse A-Roid of anything just yet, but it's rare to see someone his age gain a bunch of muscle without losing any bat speed. Understand that these sorts of things don;t really bother me, I'm not the type to bring up that the Sox may have won two world series in a row had it not been for Jason Giambi's steroid fueled homers in game seven of the ALCS in 2003. I just like pointing out evidence that steroids are still very prevalent in MLB, and this is just the latest piece of evidence. Many of the purists want to just point the finger at Barry Bonds ignoring all the evidence at so many other stars, btw how is that Sammy Sosa comeback going? I'm glad to see he got over the initial scare and is now back with his old friend the hypodermic needle.

Thats all I've got for now, I'm sure I'll be back soon with another load of my normal crap, til then.

-Bender Out