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Lance Armstrong

• JaLaBar 1,254 Posts

  Sun, Jan 20 2013 8:15 PM

  oneputtdavid:

  Now as too Barry Bonds, as an AVID baseball fan, BB was a 5 tool player before all the hoopla about "PEDs". Do you know he was awarded the most MVP'S in major league history? Oh did you know he won 2 MVP's as that skinny kid in Pittsburgh?

  Yes, I do know... but he also CHOSE to cheat.  There is a character clause in the HoF charter.  Have there been people allowed in that probably shouldn't have been due to the character clause?  Yes, certainly.  However, in most of those cases, we are talking about a different era.  When Ty Cobb was elected, his racist attitudes weren't considered nearly as reprehensible to the general public as they would be today, right or wrong.  Bonds knowingly cheated, and because of that he and others cheated the game and it's history.  Bonds, McGwire, Sosa... all broke records that SHOULD still stand BECAUSE they cheated.  Bonds was a great, great, HoF quality ballplayer before he chose to cheat.  He's the all-time Home Run king AND the single-season Home Run king BECAUSE he cheated.  I hope he and the other poster children of the steroid age NEVER get inducted.

  Iva, I had actually read Rosenberg's SI piece before you posted the link.  The thing is, was Lance a mediocre cyclist before he started doping BECAUSE he wasn't and others were?  After he started doping, there is no question that he became the best cyclist in the world, better than a bunch of other world class cyclists that were also doping.  Pretty much every recent winner since Lemond has been found to dope at some point during or since their win.  Isn't it possible in a totally clean sport, Lance would have been pretty damn good?  I also think something within his psyche... his drive and will... changed when coming face to face with his mortality.  He became more driven.

  But I think the reprehensible side was always there.  He really seems to have a bit of sociopath, not really given to any empathy.  On the other hand, Tyler Hamilton knows him a lot better than I do, and he said he thought Lance looked 'broken' in the interview.  Said he'd never seen him look like that.  Who knows?

  I don't like the person that Lance is at all.  But I still find much to admire about his accomplishments.

• Chinajohn 1,190 Posts

  Mon, Jan 21 2013 12:30 AM

  I must admit to some sympathy with Lance Armstrong. I feel the length of his 'sentence' is disproportionate to what happens in other sports.

  Take Olympic level track athletes if you are caught taking performance enhancing drugs it is a 2 year ban MAXIMUM. The lifetime ban imposed by the British Olympic Association on Dwain Chambers was deemed illegal by the Court of Arbitration in Sport. Surely what's sauce for the goose should also be sauce for the gander?

  So, three options, ban everyone caught drug cheating for life, give them all the same sentence, or legalise all performance enhancing drugs.

  Personally I would favour a total ban or total legalisation, but it should be the same for all sporting competitors.

• LizzieRossetti 1,545 Posts

  Mon, Jan 21 2013 1:14 AM

  All very well, but far more important was the issue of those Wiggins sideburns. A life ban sidestepped by getting rid, sweet move Bradley.

  Lizzie xx

• saltiresfan 2,266 Posts

  Mon, Jan 21 2013 1:54 AM

  @ChinaJohn - he could have had a reduced ban and kept all his TDF titles if he had cooperated with USADA. Instead he issued lawsuits against them. He wouldn't cooperate then because of the perjury threat from the SCA deposition so he had to wait till 2013. Anyway the reason he wouldn't confirm the Betsy Andreu story about the hospital is that one of the doctors who treated him testified in the 2005 case that LA hadn't said that. The doctor wouldn't get prosecuted for perjury but would potentially get struck off.

  There's also pretty strong evidence of the inducements the doctor was given to confirm LA's story.

• oneputtdavid 1,337 Posts

  Mon, Jan 21 2013 2:21 PM

  JaLaBar:

  but he also CHOSE to cheat.

  CHEAT! Give me your definition of Cheat! How did he cheat? Using FDA approved drugs? 

  How did Pete Rose cheat being the all time hit leader in BB history? 

  Did Dock Ellis cheat pitching a no-hitter on LSD?

  Did Ty Cobb cheat for sharping his spikes? 

  Did the Baltimore Orioles pitching staff cheat in the 70's from a mound that was two inches higher than regulation?

  Is it cheating when the home team, with a sub-average SS, 2b does't cut the grass, then soaks it before playing a ground ball hitting foe?

  Did Walter Johnson and Grover Alexander cheat for purposely throwing at batters heads?

  You mentioned "Character" as a prefacer to accomplishments. I concur. I choose to give those who have givin their whole life, their due!

  I respect your comments "L" as an avid BB fan!  :)

   

   

   

   

   

• JaLaBar 1,254 Posts

  Mon, Jan 21 2013 2:53 PM

  FDA approved at one time, but at the time, while they weren't technically against baseball's rules, they were AGAINST THE LAW.  Steroids have been illegal for some time in this country.  The Cream and the Clear, as Barry called them, were illegal substances under federal law when he used them.  Sorry, but there is NOTHING anyone can say to me to make me feel other than that those players that used steroids and/or HGH (Andro is considered a steroid as well) to dramatically increase their strength, stamina, ability to recuperate from injury etc, thus making a mockery of the game, were cheating... one of baseball's strengths was the fact that over 70 years, you could pretty much compare players no matter the age, since the dead ball age.  There have been fluxes, such as when the mound has been raised, then lowered.  But overall, baseball has been the same, and statistically one era wasn't much different than any other.  Advances in training methods for hitters balanced out with those for pitchers, and a sub-3 ERA was still a good season, a .300 plus season still a good season, and a 50 homer season a rarity, 60 had only been reached twice, and if a dozen players were over 30, it was news.  During that era they made a mockery of the game and the record book.

  Don't get me wrong... Bonds has a credible claim as the best position player in baseball history.  Roger Clemens has a credible claim as the best pitcher in baseball history (if you are asking, Ruth and Walter Johnson or if you remove the fact that Ruth pitched, Mays and Walter Johnson).  It is a shame that they didn't get voted in first ballot, and a shame that they shouldn't ever be inducted.  But I hope they don't, just the same, because they chose to cheat.

  And by the way, Walter Johnson wasn't afraid to pitch inside, but he never head hunted.  Now, if you had used Bob Gibson...

• 9,041 Posts

  Mon, Jan 21 2013 3:43 PM

  Armstrong...

  Jersey ---- Yellow

  Piss --- Green.

• JaLaBar 1,254 Posts

  Mon, Jan 21 2013 5:45 PM

  JaLaBar:

  Don't get me wrong... Bonds has a credible claim as the best position player in baseball history.  Roger Clemens has a credible claim as the best pitcher in baseball history (if you are asking, Ruth and Walter Johnson or if you remove the fact that Ruth pitched, Mays and Walter Johnson).  It is a shame that they didn't get voted in first ballot, and a shame that they shouldn't ever be inducted.  But I hope they don't, just the same, because they chose to cheat.

   

  For what it is worth, I'd put Pete Rose (and Shoeless Joe)  in before Clemens or Bonds.  No one ever showed any credible evidence that Rose made any decisions based on bets.  All his bets were for his team to win (when he bet on his team's games).  But he did bet on baseball as an active participant which was against the rules.  And much like Lance, his denials in the face of the evidence are the main reason he received the lifetime ban (and Hall exclusion).  Like Bonds, Rose was a HoF player before his infractions were discovered (though it was likely Rose bet on the game as a player, it was never proven... he and many others also did, among other things, speed and cocaine while they played).  And while some those substances were illegal also at the time, they just aren't the PEDs that steroids and HGH and other things are.  I've done speed and cocaine and pretty much any other drug you can name that was around pre-mid-90s.  My athletic ability on them was marginally better.  They just made sports even more fun, not easier lol.

• Boomerboy44 1,514 Posts

  Mon, Jan 21 2013 7:31 PM

  Never thought Lance going through what he went through in his fight against cancer would ever put anything in his body that didn't belong there. Shows what greed and arrogance will do to you. The guy was a hero to me....now just another cheating, overpaid, self righteous, hairball. Hope he spends the rest of his life in the courts defending his ill gotten gains.

   

• oneputtdavid 1,337 Posts

  Tue, Jan 22 2013 5:01 PM

  JaLaBar:

  For what it is worth, I'd put Pete Rose (and Shoeless Joe)  in before Clemens or Bonds.

  JaLaBar:

  For what it is worth, I'd put Pete Rose (and Shoeless Joe)  in before Clemens or Bonds.

  FWIW  (" Hey Joe tell me it ain't so")  Was involved in the Blacksox FIX.....Period. Look it up?     Rose, Bonds, Clemens without a question proved they were worthy........before BB politics got involved!    just my opinion, we all have one! :)