http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2863623
DAVID ORTIZ COMMENTS:
Ortiz believes Bonds needs to be cheered. Loudly.
“He deserves respect,” Ortiz said Sunday in Minneapolis. “People are not going to give it to him because of all the bad things running around, this and that, but people need to realize. I’ve heard a lot of different things about Barry Bonds, but people should just admit it - this guy’s a bad (expletive).”
Whether or not Bonds will be on the verge of breaking Hank Aaron’s career mark of 755 home runs - he’s at 744 with 34 games to play before he arrives here on June 15 - Ortiz expects Fenway Park fans will be making a mistake by focusing on the performance-enhancing drug allegations against Bonds rather than his home run totals.
Ortiz has an almost willful naivete about both Bonds and steroids. He still does not believe in his heart or his head that Bonds took steroids. And even if it were proven to him, Ortiz still would not link it to what Bonds does with a baseball bat.
“To hit the frickin’ ball, the guy makes it look easy, but it ain’t. I don’t know how you can have that swing, consistently. I don’t know how steroids can do that,” Ortiz said. “There are supposed to be guys using steroids in the game, and there’s nobody close to Barry Bonds. What’s that mean? He was using the best (expletive)? Know what I’m saying?”
Ortiz is not sure how he would feel if someone ever were to prove to him that Bonds took steroids. It sounds as if it would not matter.
“I don’t look at it like that. I look at it hitting-wise, because I don’t know what steroids can do to you as a baseball player. You’ve still got to swing the bat, man,” Ortiz said. “If I ever use steroids, and then I know what the difference can be and I’m using them, I’ll tell you, ‘Yeah, whatever,’ but I don’t know what the feelings are when you use the steroids. But I can tell you how it feels to pull yourself together to swing the bat.”
No matter where Bonds breaks Aaron’s mark, Ortiz wants commissioner Bud Selig to be there.
“He’s just making things worse,” Ortiz said of Selig’s inconclusive remarks about attending. “He’s the commissioner, there’s nothing you can do about it. You can’t be saying that. What are people going to think about the game? They’ll be like, ‘This game is a joke.’ He should come, even if he doesn’t want to.”
Despite revelations in “Game of Shadows,” the book by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams that offers a damning chain of evidence linking BALCO and a number of baseball players, including Bonds, Ortiz said he is unaware of any evidence that Bonds used steroids.
“Have they proved he used steroids?” Ortiz asked. “But it was a cream or something he was using. He wasn’t injecting anything, right?”
Ortiz said he just cannot be sure so he doesn’t want to think about it.
“People come to me, talking about Barry Bonds using steroids and I’m like, ‘He’s the only one, or are people focused on him because of what he’s doing?’ So I don’t go there, I don’t even think about it,” Ortiz said. “I think about how he can be that perfect at the plate because I don’t think that steroids mentally get you perfect.”
Ortiz believes people who have a problem with Bonds either never played the game or are pitchers.
“If you go to the hitters, and ask them, ‘A), What do you think about 744 home runs?’ and b), ‘You know how hard it is to hit a baseball. What do you think about that?’ The bottom line is, I don’t care what people say.”
CURT SCHILLING'S COMMENTS:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18557376/
Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling suggested that it's a travesty to the national pastime that Barry Bonds is about to break Henry Aaron's home run record, the Boston Globe reported Tuesday.
On the WEEI’s "Dennis and Callahan" radio show, Schilling was asked if fans should "hold their noses" while watching Bonds’s pursuit of the all-time record. Bonds is 11 from tying the all-time record of 755.
“Oh yeah. I would think so. I mean, he admitted that he used steroids,” said Schilling, according to the Globe. “I mean, there’s no gray area. He admitted to cheating on his wife, cheating on his taxes, and cheating on the game, so I think the reaction around the league, the game, being what it is, in the case of what people think. Hank Aaron not being there. The commissioner [Bud Selig] trying to figure out where to be. It’s sad.
“And I don’t care that he’s black, or green, or purple, or yellow, or whatever. It’s unfortunate . . . there’s good people and bad people. It’s unfortunate that it’s happening the way it’s happening.”
Despite Schilling's remarks, Bonds has never admitted to knowingly using steroids. On Dec. 4, 2003, Bonds was one of several athletes forced to testify as part of the BALCO case, which centered around the San Francisco-area lab, its founder Victor Conte, and Greg Anderson — Bonds’ personal trainer and longtime friend.
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So it's apparent again to anyone with a brain that not only is there a divide in America regarding this issue, there is a divide in the Red Sox clubhouse.
I'm sure IRS Agent Novitsky would love to have an admission from Bonds that he cheated on his taxes. It would make his tax evasion case easier to prove. It seems Mr. Schiling doesn't mind if the facts get in the way of his fancy story, but I missed the part where Bonds admitted cheating on his taxes. Hey Schil, get a clue, you fucking dope, Bonds hasn't admitted cheating on his taxes and the government, as yet, has not prosecuted a tax evasion case againt him. Read the papers once in while.
Also, I wonder if the fat blowhard (among others) intends to give his teammate Ortiz the same lack of benefit of the doubt about his admission of a possible "unknowing" use of steroids. I'm sure ther will be some perceptible difference between the two stories (Ortiz and Bonds).
AS I'VE SAID MANY TIMES. YOU SIMPLY CAN'T MAKE THIS STUFF UP, BUT APPARENTLY THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT SCHILLING DOES IN HIS OWN MIND. JUST MAKE UP "FACTS" OUT OF THIN AIR. MAKES YOU WONDER IF HE HAS EVEN READ "GAME OF SHADOWS". AND THIS IS THE GUY THAT CONGRESS WANTS TO HELP LEAD THE FIGHT AGAINST STEROID ABUSE. A GUY THAT JUST MAKES SHIT UP. COME ON, THIS IS TOO EASY.
Very interesting unsolicited comments from Ortiz about the "protein shakes". Makes you wonder what may or may not have been going on in or around those "Baseball Academies" that major league teams have scattered around the Dominican Republic. Makes you wonder if there may or may be be an eerie parallel between the aforementioned "protein shakes" and the "vitamins" of the German Democratic Republic that were given to the German women's swim team and other athletes without their knowledge. Makes you wonder sometimes, if that's why a disproportionate number of players and prospects are making it to The Show from that small island over recent years. God help everyone involved if that turns out to be the case.
Additional Note: The next day analysis by the talking heads focused primarily, almost exclusively, on Schilling's comments (which reinforces the negative evidence against Bonds) rather than Ortiz's comments (which tends to provide exculpatory evidence that Bonds story might be possible or reasonable).
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