Jonathan Lee Riches strikes again

Avid readers, or people who are awake, might remember Jonathan Lee Riches from such lawsuits as "Michael Vick stole my animals and sold them on eBay for terrorism funds".

Well, he has a new target: none other than the new home run king (Sadaharu Oh?) and our good friend, Barold Lamarcus Bonds.



Riches now claims that among other things, Bonds sent hitmen to his residence after he threatened to reveal his steroid usage in 2004, gave mustard gas to Saddam Hussein, and selling steroids to nuns. He seeks 42,000,000.00 million dollars in Swiss Francs (I'm pretty sure that is a defunct currency and who requests a dollar amount in Swiss francs?) for these damages.

I'm guessing that Riches was annoyed at the time it took for Fox News to break his Vick case, so he went for another one. In any case, I know what story I'm going to be submitting to Digg in three weeks...

[Hat-tip to Nerds on Sports for this one. Being a nerd writing on sports myself, I feel like that site has a nice little pull on me. And they were the first blogroll that Pure Point ever made *tear*]

[edit] DC Scrap ran this story on Epic Carnival with the same title as mine and the same closing joke. I realize that both were obvious choices and it's most likely purely coincidental since I doubt DC Scrap reads my blog, so I'm not saying he plagiarized me. I just don't want people thinking that I plagiarized him, so note that my post came 3 hours before his.

Digging for sports

I noted yesterday that one of the most dugg stories on Digg was a Fox News Report covering the Jonathan Lee Riches lawsuit of Michael Vick.

I'm not going to go into the low level of journalism exhibited in the article. 100% Injury Rate does that well enough.

This is going to be about the general ineptitude of the Digg community when it comes to sports.

I recognize that the Digg community and perusers of sports blogs are probably very disparate groups. I also might be biased because I usually take issue with a lot of things said on Digg. However, this story was barely news three weeks ago when every sports blogger alive (including me) posted about it.

The title of the Digg story is "Michael Vick outed as Al Qaeda operative, sued for 63 zillion dollars," which means that he (I can only assume) missed the inherent humor in someone being sued for 63,000,000,000.00 billion dollars. Nevertheless, the diggers ate the story up, propelling it to its current mark of 2354 diggs.

I would have dugg this story had it been submitted on the July 27 even with that gaff, but is it even news now?

This wouldn't be too bad if it didn't happen so often though.

Three weeks ago, there was a story listing the "Top 50 Basketball Players of All-Time", which garnered almost 500 diggs despite listing Lebron and D-Wade at 29 and 30 respectively and Dirk at 26 while greats like Robert Parish, Kevin McHale, James Worthy, and Bill Walton went unranked.

When Bonds broke the record, TIME had a slideshow of Barry through the years, which was dugg 844 times. Almost 12 hours and 40 comments passed by before anyone pointed out (I was the first to) the bogus stat that TIME calls "Runs per at bat." His rookie year, Barold apparently scored 25.8 runs per at-bat, a record for sure as I don't know anyone else who has scored more than 1. I clarified that they probably meant "At bats per home run," which isn't an honest mistake by any means and I can't believe that slipped by the editors, and I was dugg down at first.

I realize that a good number of legitimate sports bloggers frequent Digg. I assume that Hank Worrell of WTB does by the "Digg This!" button on some of his posts. I assume that WCK at 100% Injury Rate is as well, since sometimes (not often) his posts mirror stories that are in the most dugg section for the day. Let me say that I have nothing but the utmost respect for these two as they represent what I am striving to become. However, it pains me that the majority of the Digg public is that clueless about things.

Alright, I'm done ranting for the night. I feel like this is the type of post that doesn't lend itself to comments, but maybe if you feel like you'd like to share similar experiences, by all means do so.

As a little sidenote, Google Analytics tells me that someone actually came to my site after googling "barold lamarcus bonds." I don't know why or how this happened. Maybe it actually is his real name. Or maybe they particularly enjoyed those two posts of mine. I'm hoping for the latter.

Conspiracy?

So Bonds hit no. 757 yesterday, so reports on his antics are still abuzz.

One new tidbit just dawned on me that I didn't realize before. Bonds gave Mike Bacsik a autographed bat after Bacsik surrendered no. 756 to him. I'm sure it was good natured, but does it not have potential to be fishy?

I remember Torii Hunter got in trouble for something like this earlier this season, when he gave the Royals clubhouse champagne for sweeping the Tigers the previous season.

Hunter was found to be in violation of baseball's rule 21b, whch states:

Any player or person connected with a Club who shall offer or give any gift or reward to a player or person connected with another Club for services rendered or supposed to be or to have been rendered in defeating or attempting to defeat a competing Club, and any player or person connected with a Club who shall solicit or accept from a player connected with another Club any gift or reward for any services rendered, or supposed to have been rendered, or who, having been offered any such gift or reward, shall fail to inform his League President or the Commissioner or the President of the Minor League Association, as the case may be, immediately of such offer, and of all facts and circumstances connected therewith, shall be declared ineligible for not less than three years.

I guess Bonds wasn't rewarding Bacsik for defeating another team, but what if there were extenuating circumstances to the home run. Consider that Mike Bacsik is a career 10-11 pitcher with a 5.21 ERA who was pitching to Bonds the entire night, as Bonds had hits in each of the two at-bats he had before Bacsik gave up the HR. Also consider that Bonds gave Clay Hensley a similar souvenir bat after he gave up no. 755. Hensley has already been suspended for using steroids and was sent down to Triple A the day after giving up the Bonds HR. It isn't like Bacsik and Hensley have rock-solid major league careers ahead of them, so is it unfathomable that they could be bribed?

I've been unable to find a full MLB rule book anywhere online to see if there is anything illegal with what Bonds did, which I'm sure there wasn't. The bats were probably just good-hearted tokens of appreciation.

[edit] Courtesy of baseball1.com, MLB rule 21a states:

Any player or person connected with a club ... who shall solicit or attempt to induce any player or person connected with a club ... to lose, or attempt to lose, or to fail to give his best efforts towards the winning of any baseball game with which such other player or person is or may be in any way connected [shall be declared permanently ineligible.]

Gifts are apparently only bad if they are given to clubs for defeating other clubs (Rule 21b) or to umpires (Rule 21c), though I guess a solicitation usually implies some sort of reward.

756*

I usually try to steer clear of topics that everyone and their mother is talking about about, but the situation afoot merits discussion from anyone and everyone.

Unless you've been living in Siberia and your only source of the news is my blog (or were sleeping at the time...), you know that in the bottom of the 5th inning in last night's game between the San Francisco Giants and the Washington Nationals, Barold Lamarcus Bonds hit the 756th home run of his career, thus passing Hank Aaron to become the all-time career home run leader.

There is no hiding that not many people like Barry Bonds as a player or a person, and fans everywhere were sad to see one of the most hallowed records in sports fall to such a character. Personally, when I saw that there was a delay in the game during the bottom of the 5th after he hit his home run, I hoped that it was because God decided that the record wasn't going to go in this fashion, so he hit At&T (formerly Pac Bell) Park with a devasting earthquake, thus killing BLB and striking the game and all accumulated stats from the record (since it had not gone past 5 innings yet). Much to my dismay, this was not what happened; they were just doing a short on-field celebration of the feat.

However, unlike most people, the reason that I didn't want to see the record go was not because of any suspicion that BLB was using performance enhancers. Maybe it's because I did not grow up loving the game, but I fail to see how it is bad that a player wants to do anything he can to improve. I, for one, don't really care that he may have taken steroids. Rather than face alienation from all of my friends and the sports world, I'll detail why the tradition reasons for thinking that steroids are bad don't really hit home with me.

1. Using steroids is a dishonest way to get better without working hard.

First of all, I'm pretty sure most people know this, but steroids aren't like instant muscle-gro. What anabolic/androgenic steroids do is increase protein synthesis and embiggen muscle fibers, which means that players will get bigger faster, but not effortlessly. A major effect of steroids is that, because of the higher rate of protein synthesis, the recovery period after a workout is significantly shortened, which means that users will be able to work out harder and more often, thus enabling themselves to get much stronger in a short period of time. In that respect, protein shakes and creatine supplements have much of the same effect, albeit to a much smaller degree.

To say that this isn't fair to players who are "doing things the right way," is not a very sound argument. For one thing, if steroids are only stigmatized because of their effect as performance enhancers, then what separates them from the widely accepted, legal methods of bettering yourself? This is a bad analogy, but why aren't contact lenses outlawed for the same reason? I'm not even talking about the special high tech lenses that changes the way you see colors so that the ball is more contrasted against the infield grass, but rather normal, vision correcting lenses. Players with the ability to correct their sight to 20/20 or even 20/15 or 20/10, have a huge advantage over those who choose not to, but we aren't out there advocating daily eye exercises.

Moreover, if I'm a fringe major league player, and someone tells me that steroids are the difference between my being a superstar and my making 30,000 dollars a year in the minor leagues and constantly worrying about losing my job with no other skills to fall back upon, I think I'd be crazy not to be using. Yes, you want to do what is for the good of the game, but when it really comes to putting food on the table, sometimes you have to cut corners. Sure, this argument doesn't hold weight with people like BLB who still would have been superstars in their own right without steroids, but for the Paxton Crawfords and Robert Machados of the world, people who have now been long forgotten by most of the world, you see why they do it.

All an individual player can do is work to get better any way that he can. If a player decides that that involves countless hours in the gym, careful analysis of scouting reports and endless reps on the field, then good for him. If another decides that the best way to do it is through steroids, I don't think he should be blackballed for that choice.

2. Steroids are illegal, and thus using them is cheating.

For one thing, many players started using performance enhancers while they were still legal, and then their popularization prompted the subsequent banning of the substances. If you look at it strictly by the book, then BLB has never tested positive for a banned substance, so either he was using something that the MLB hasn't outlawed yet, or he is masking it (very probably the latter).

The more pertinent issue is whether it is really cheating if, as rumored in Game of Shadows and Juiced, 50 to 75 percent of major leaguers did it at the peak of the steroid age. I'd liken it to a class graded on a curve, where the median grade is shifted to be a 75 and all the other grades are changed accordingly. If everyone in the MLB is better, then really no one is better, as it all cancels out.

Maybe I'm not the most unbiased person on the topic of cheating given my history (readers who don't actually know me as a person might ask "What history?"), but like I said above, you do what you can to get where you want to be.

3. Glorifying the benefits of steroids without addressing the side-effects sets a bad example for kids.

There are many things in sports that kids should not be imitating, just there are many such things in life. This does not mean that professionals who know what they are getting into should be ostracized for engaging in such activities.

For example (this will be the last really bad analogy that I'll give), I wouldn't suggest that an 8-year-old regularly throw curveballs because of the effect the ptich has on his arm and also the danger to the other players (I remember when one of my friends was hit in the face by a pitch and hospitalized). This doesn't mean that Barry Zito shold be barred from doing so (though maybe Mark Prior should be). Kids as young as 12 or 13 are electing to have Tommy John surgery after seeing their favorite pitchers come back stronger after the procedure, but people aren't ostracizing AJ Burnett for that reason (or Tommy John for that matter).

So yes, I agree that it's bad that reports show that 5th graders are using steroids. However, I also think that kids are dumb, and major leaguers should not be held responsible for that.

In conclusion, BLB's career achievements are a testiment to both his tremendous natural ability and the amount of work and passion he has devoted to the game and should not be diminished by the fact that he (allegedly) took steroids. That said, while I salute him for his accomplishment, as I mentioned before, I guess I just don't like him as a person and was sad to see the record fall. I'd probably have the same reaction if Zack Randolph ended up as the all-time career scoring leader (knock on wood).