Is Usain Bolt Clean Or Has He Just Not Been Caught Yet?

Same question for Michael Phelps.

Remember back when Lance Armstrong was a great guy and a wonderful role model?

I was a big Barry bonds fan. Well, I still am. I haven't turned from loving him to hating him. It's just that I finally stopped kidding myself about the overwhelming evidence that he was breaking the rules -- and, for example, paying a friend to spend years in prison to help him break the rules. My denial about Bonds lasted a long time, but not as long as some San Francisco Giants fans. I do believe some of them still think Barry's innocent, God bless their innocent, trusting hearts. I still believe that Barry is a whole lot of amazing things (Lance, too, for that matter), but innocent is no longer one of those things.

Reggie Jackson is Barry's uncle. Back when I was still standing up for Barry in arguments over whether he was juicing, I kept saying that some men just get much more muscular when they're in their 30's, which is true, and I pointed to Reggie as an example. Reggie bulked up big-time late in his career (1967 to 1987 in the bigs.) When I stopped fighting the accusations against Barry, my entire view of sports and athleticism just collapsed, and I figured anybody could be doping, including Reggie back when he had played. If Reggie did it, would that even have meant he was ahead of his time? Accusations of doping in Major League Baseball weren't yet flying in the late 70's when Reggie was the remarkably-buff Mr October,

but steroids and human growth hormone had already been used in bodybuilding for some time, and had taken that sport from this

to this:

and even before 1980 a few baseball stars had sudden eye-popping muscle growth. They said it was Nautilus and free weights. And no doubt it was. Just ingesting roids won't grow muscle on you. The roids just allow you to work out more often by making your muscles recover faster.

Not only do I now suspect pretty much every successful athlete of using banned substances, I'm sort of in favor of sports just not banning substances any more. Why? Because the bans are not being successfully enforced. The steroid era is not over. Let everybody juice as much as they want. Yes, using that stuff is dangerous. But so is chronic denial of the obvious.

Barry Bonds

My favorite baseball player of all time (think: 3rd all-time highest career offensive WAR, 4th OBS, 6th on-base, 5th slugging, more than twice as many intentional BB's as #2 Hank Aaron, 1st overall BB's, 1st runs created, 3rd runs scored, 4th total bases, 2nd extra-base hits, 5th RBI's, 33rd SB's, 1st HR's, .984 fielding % over 22 seasons, 7 Gold Gloves, 12 Silver Sluggers, highest single-season HR's and 7 MVP awards) was once again not inducted into the Hall of Fame yesterday.

However, back in April his last remaining steroids-related Federal conviction was overturned. So there's that.

We'll get 'em next year.

"Wait -- Batman Cured His Broken Back By Doing Push-Ups?"

No, Ragu, Batman isn't doing all those pushups to cure his broken back, he's just not letting a broken back get in the way of him doing his pushups. The way I don't let chronic tendonitis in my left elbow stop me from doing my pushups. The same way that... (Okay, start playing "Pomp & Circumstance" in the background, softly at first, and gradually crescendo until it's loud when I finish. Okay.) The same way that Kobe plays basketball on a broken foot and grimaces and complains, and the way Shaq would play basketball on a broken foot without grimacing or complaining, and the way that Barry Bonds...

Okay, h8ers, let's talk about Barry.



He may be a cheater and an asshole, but you know why he wore that armor on his right arm, you know why MLB let him keep wearing that armor? It's not because he and Bud Selig were pals. Selig never liked him any better than you do. It's not because Bonds paid somebody off. There was a perfectly legitimate reason why he was allowed to continue to wear those pads: it's because his arm was broken.

That's right, Amurrka: Barry hit his last 300 dingers on roids, but he hit his last 500 with a broken right arm. He broke it in the mid-90's, and 2 weeks later he was playing ball, and it never healed. MLB let him wear the armor because 1 fastball to his forearm would've shattered it into 100 pieces.

We do what we have to do. Because we're men. Even those of us who shave every day. And yr darn right I'm talking about shaving more than just my face! I'M A MAN!