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No Reason For A's Not To Sign Bonds Now
2007-12-13 11:13
by Ken Arneson

Jack Cust is in the Mitchell Report. If you're going to have a steroid-usin' DH, might as well have the best one.

Adam Piatt and F.P. Santangelo are also mentioned (surprising names to me), as well as the usual Canseco/Giambi-era suspects.

Just wondering: are all the people who planned to boycott the A's if they signed Bonds also planning to boycott the A's if they keep Cust?

 

 

Comments
2007-12-13 12:39:26
1.   trainwreck
I am sad that Bobby Crosby and Gil Heredia are not on this list. They just did not want it enough.
2007-12-13 13:29:40
2.   standuptriple
I wonder if Santangelo will still have a job on the Giants broadcast team?
2007-12-13 19:01:33
3.   Vishal
why are cust and bonds suddenly equivalent simply because they were both on steroids? bonds is still a jackass and eminently dislikable. cust is just a roiding AAAA player who doesn't inspire nearly the sort of visceral reactions that barry and his tiresome decade-long circus show do. bonds and clemens are the poster boy figures; cust is a bit player. what they did might be morally equivalent, but not symbolically.
2007-12-13 19:17:58
4.   joejoejoe
3 You can't deny Bonds and Clemens are hard workers. The disconnect is in the stories that people tell to teach moral behavior. "Hard work pays off" is a good moral lesson. "Cheating is wrong" is a good moral lesson. "Work hard AND cheat" is not something people teach you but it sure is an effective strategy in life if A) you don't get caught or B) the punishments are only a slap on the wrist.
2007-12-13 21:22:28
5.   Ken Arneson
3 Well that's the interesting thing about this--it creates a filter for isolating what people hate about Bonds. If Bonds and Cust both cheated, and fans still want Cust but not Bonds, then the animosity towards Bonds isn't really about the cheating, is it?
2007-12-14 08:02:50
6.   Vishal
well, the context and meaning of the cheating isn't irrelevant. if i rig the local beauty pageant in tiny ely, nevada (no i don't know if they even have one there), yeah that's an immoral act, but it's not nearly as bad as rigging the u.s. presidential election.

bonds' cheating enabled him to pretty much have his way with the game of baseball, to dominate it to an unprecedented extent, and to re-write the records that many fans (not so much myself, but many fans) find, or used to find, a source of inspiration and an object of reveration.

cust's cheating enabled him to do what, linger around AAA long enough for a desperate A's team to pick him up for half a season?

all i'm saying is that you can't really think about them separate from their contexts.

and the fact that bonds is such a boor makes it all that much easier to dislike him. propping up the giants for so many years doesn't curry many favors with this dodger fan either, i'll admit :)

2007-12-15 20:59:44
7.   Jason Wojciechowski
If we're weighing morals, is it fair to measure outcomes? I immediately think back to criminal law questions about whether it's really fair to punish a robber less than a robber whose friends happens to bring a gun (unknown to the first robber) and shoots someone, thus making the first robber (the non-shooter) guilty of felony murder.

I mean, we do it in our legal system, but that doesn't mean it's right.

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