THIS IS A GOOD QUESTION, AND I THINK I HAVE A GOOD ANSWER. From Aaron of Toronto: "Will your boycott of an alleged steroid cheat extend to confirmed cheats such as Shawne Merriman?''
No. Merriman was tested, caught, and suspended. Barry Bonds was not tested, not caught, not suspended ... for years.
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Now this sounds like dumb logic until you consider the following:
This is the same Sports Illustrated that employed Jeff Pearlman (Author of Barry Bonds and the making of an AntiHero) when he was a cub reporter. Interesting stuff from an interview Pearlman did with Deadspin here:
http://deadspin.com/sports/baseball/authors-with-pure-hearts-jeff-pearlman-171871.php
Even though I assumed he wouldn't remember me, I'd actually interviewed Barry four or five times during my years at Sports Illustrated. During the 2000 season I even did a lengthy profile on him--the first time he talked to the magazine in seven years. We sat down for about an hour, and he was spectacular. Funny, charming, charismatic. In fact, when I handed in the piece my editor was very angry. His exact words, and I quote, were, "If you wanted to give Barry Bonds a blowjob, we could have flown him to New York." So I adjusted the story, which still was very positive.
That sounds like the producers of our favorite swimsuit edition have a bit of an agenda or axe to grind. But that doesn't happen, right? Journalistic integrity and all that.
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Or how about this from one of the two main stories excerpted from the book, the quotes from ex-teammate Jay Canizaro? You read about the original quotes, but not about stuff like this.
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How much did you want to beat Jay Canizaro's ass after he pulled the switcharoo on you on live TV? We'd have really wanted to beat his ass.
Severely. I interviewed 524 people for this book, and he's the only one who did that. It infuriated me to no end, because you're talking about a writer's reputation. After I calmed down I called Jay and said, "Here's a way to settle this. You and I appear on the next day's Cold Pizza (the show where he denied all). I'll bring the audiotape of our interview and a printed transcript, and you show me exactly where and how you were misquoted." He apologized, and I actually felt sort of bad for him. Because it wasn't done out of malice, but fear. Jay was afraid that Bonds or someone could sue him, or he'd be blackballed from baseball, or ... whatever. But when you go 12 years without being accused of misquoting someone, and then someone accuses you of that, you become very, very defensive. Especially in a case like this.
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Here's more about the second main excerpt, the Ken Griffey dinner conversation, that Griffey later said never occurred.
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ESPN totally acted like your Griffey scoop was theirs in an attempt to make it look like they didn't get their asses handed to them by Sports Illustrated. Agree with that statement? Do you mind?
Actually, I'm thankful ESPN the Magazine ran the excerpt from my book. And it's hard to blame them for trying to come back at SI. The one thing I'll say is the timing really backfired for me, because the excerpt was strictly steroids-related, so it gave the imprssion that my book was another Shadows. But I don't blame ESPN at all.
http://www.slate.com/id/2139038/
Seven years ago, while visiting Orlando, Fla., with his family, Barry Bonds stopped by Ken Griffey Jr.'s house and told him he was about to start using steroids.
This scene opens the 13th chapter of my upcoming Bonds biography, Love Me, Hate Me. Bonds was there. Griffey was there. I have verification.
And yet, even before I sat down to write the chapter, I knew the inevitable aftermath. Bonds would deny everything and call the writer a no-good sack of shit. Griffey would shrug his shoulders and yawn, "Never took place." Indeed, when ESPN the Magazine ran the excerpt two weeks ago, Bonds and Griffey responded predictably. They both insisted the conversation was fictitious.
"I don't remember it ever happening," Griffey said. "The only thing that Barry and I ever really talked about was me coming out to San Francisco and working out with him. And I told him, 'For six weeks, I can't leave my family.' … As far as the other thing, that conversation didn't happen."
Around the same time Griffey's words scrolled across the bottom of my TV screen, I received a phone call from an ESPN producer. He wanted a comment.
"A comment on what?" I asked.
"On Jay Canizaro," he said. "He's denying everything."
Canizaro, a one-time journeyman second baseman, had spoken to me at length about his early years with the Giants, when he watched Bonds balloon from Lara Flynn Boyle to Lee Haney. A former steroid user, Canizaro knew all the signs of a juicer. Zit-coated skin. Peanut-sized testicles. Moodiness. And Bonds was a juicer.
"Hell, he took off his shirt the first day and his back just looked like a mountain of acne," Canizaro told me. "Anybody who had any kind of intelligence or street smarts about them knew Barry was using some serious stuff."
Now, he was backtracking. Suddenly Canizaro admired Bonds as a great sportsman and was shocked—shocked!—that anyone would suspect the legend of cheating.
I called Canizaro that afternoon. In front of me were a printed transcript of our interview and a copy of the audiotape. My hands were shaking. My blood was boiling. I asked him how he could go on national TV and deny what he told me, especially considering I had it all on tape.
Canizaro hemmed and hawed. He stammered and stuttered. Finally, with a hint of humiliation in his voice, he admitted that he was, of all things, scared. How, he wondered, would his comments play to his major league brethren?
I was angry. I wasn't surprised. In Major League Baseball, there is a code. The Code. Simply put, ballplayers do not rat out other ballplayers.
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You have to wonder if the title "Game of Shadows" doesn't also describe how the media virtually manufactures the news nowadays, as opposed to simply reporting the news.
Everybody knows that you can make your name and gobs of money as a reporter quickly by breaking the next "Watergate". And it seems like the prevaling attitude is if you can't break the news, you have to make the news. It's how you adavnce and become a "name", a face, a talking-head, expert on the round-the-clock TV News shows.
Now I'm not personally a big fan of Curt Schilling, he's beaten the Giants too many times for that, but I have to agree with his comments after the Bloody Sock-Gate comments of Gary Thorne. There are some bad apples in the industry and there is really no accountability for some of these numb-skulls unless they say or write something totally politically incorrect and it gets through the filters.
Schilling's Quotes:
"So for one of the first times this blog serves one of the purposes I'd hoped it would if the need arose. The media hacked and spewed their way to a day or two of stories that had zero basis in truth. A story fabricated by the media, for the media. The best part was that instead of having to sit through a litany of interviews to 'defend' myself, or my teammates, I got to do that here."
So now, players have a defense mechanism or an outlet when they feel they have been unfairly portrayed by the local media. Fans can get a chance to hear their side of the story, in their own words if they so choose. That was supposed to be the job of the beat reporters, but the level of trust has dipped to such low levels and the technology is now in place that there is an avenue for players to fight back if they feel they've been wronged.
Interesting world in which we live in, that's for sure.
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