The Giants have already sold about 2.5 million tickets, nearly the same number as last season at this time. [Team owner Peter] Magowan isn't concerned about a fallout from the steroids reports, saying: "I'm pretty confident. I think we know our fans pretty well and the fans like Barry and they show up to see him perform. I suspect they will again."
Well, would it be a tremendous accomplishment? Was it a tremendous accomplishment when Nykesha Sales set the women's scoring record at UConn? She took great heat for it, in fact, because she had wrecked her knee the previous game, ending her senior season just one point short of the record. Her next opponents allowed her an uncontested layup to set the mark, and then UConn let them score uncontested to make it 2-2, and then they started playing for real.
Now, if I were the previous record holder, I'd have wondered why they had bothered to honor the mark I'd set honestly if they were just going to conspire with an opponent to give it away - especially since that new mark is bound to fall sometime. (The actual previous holder, Ms. Kerry Bascom, signed off on the plan. And contrary to that article, Ms. Sales played 17 MORE games than Ms. Bascom, not the reverse. It's all in the media guide. [PDF link])
It's simple - "tremendous accomplishment" implies that one had to work to achieve it. What has Bonds accomplished by cheating his way to a mark that Hank Aaron came by honestly? One he came by, in fact, at considerable risk to his safety? Aaron received thousands of death threats for daring to break a mark held by a white man. Now baseball is going to spit in that man's face? How is this different from hitting "reset" in Madden when you're about to lose the Super Bowl? Seriously - Bonds and the Giants can cram it with walnuts. I don't care if steroids wasn't officially banned until 2003, or that Bonds filled seats and moved merchandise. The Giants and he cheated and profited grossly from it, and continue to do so, and it is grotesque.
This is how you do it, folks. Notice that they had to sneak behind Mr. Haasis' back, and once he found out, he wanted no part of it, because cheating is beneath a true competitor. (And no, I don't consider Mike Strahan the single-season record-holder for sacks, because of Favre's monkey business. That should have gone down in the official scoring as a rush, loss of four yards.) Bonds isn't worthy to carry this kid's gear bag to the team bus.
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