I don't understand how Bonds can get suspended because people don't like him. I am not a fan of Bonds, but if he was within the rules of baseball, they can't do anything to him. I know it's been said better elsewhere, but if you want to have McGwire & Sosa, then you have to also have Bonds & Canseco. There's no room for popularity when it comes to rules.

What do we do if we're convinced Bonds is a cheater, but that upwards of half the other guys on the field are cheaters as well?

What do we do if we're convinced that, if Baseball created an environment where this was acceptable, it would be ridiculous not to assume players would do it?

What do we do if we're convinced that the whole thing is a quagmire, but if the new rules are cutting down (or indeed even ending) steroid usage, then that's really the best outcome we can hope for: bringing an end to an era without the impossible task of judging who is at fault?

With all due respect, the NEW news today is about Gary Sheffield. That letter from a Giants fan could easily be written by a Yankee fan who ought to be equally embarrassed for cheering Sheffield (and Giambi). I, however, am not a Yankee fan.

Bonds has been made into public enemy number one. How he's any different than Gary Sheffield and Jason Giambi is utterly beyond me.

Yankee apologists, I await your reply.

Josh, at least Giambi seemed penitent. He knows he did it, and he knows that we know that he did it. And he's ashamed, even though he (on advice from his lawyers most probably) hasn't come out and admitted it to the public. With regard to Bonds, he's just a big dick. Why should anyone forgive him? He knows he did it but never once has he even seemed the smallest bit ashamed or repentant for what he did.

Josh, I'll take up your call as a Yankee apologist. I am not however a steroid apologist.

Here's what I see as the difference.

Jeremy Giambi admitted and apologized for steroid use a long time ago. He's not a major star though so that got little attention.

If you watch the entire press conference instead of focusing on the omission of the word steroids, Jason Giambi basically apologized for using steroids as well. He said everything in the grand jury testimony was true and then he apologized. Sure, it was a bit of a half-assed apologized, but he's not going to incriminate himself in a news conference. The thing about Giambi is that he apologized, he hit rock-bottom, and then he had an excellent season that we have to assume was without the help of steroids because he was never suspended. Giambi was able to achieve baseball redemption in a way. Was he on drugs when he won his MVP? Probably. And that's bad. But was he on steroids last year during his comeback player of the year season? Right now, I have to go with no.

Sheffield...eh. I'm lukewarm on Sheffield. I won't make excuses for him. He should man up and do what he needs to do. I haven't read Game of Shadows yet, but if other things that I've read are correct (Howard Bryant's excellent book for one), then Sheffield is just as guilty.

As for Bonds, what people don't like is that he lies. And he does so over and over again. He lies about steroid use, about taxes, about everything. Sure, the sources against may not be the most upstanding citizens, but at this point, I'm inclined to believe Kimberly Bell and Greg Anderson over Bonds. I don't care if Bonds is a dick or the second coming of Ghandi. Everytime he starts talking about conspiracies and such, his credibility takes a hit. It seems that he started using steroids around 1999 when he saw what McGwire and Sosa were doing while he was getting old and fragile. At that point, he already was one of the best players ever. He choose this route and it's hard to deny it. The physical evidence is there and even the statistical evidence is there.

Now, I don't necessarily think he should be suspended for it. But the days that I ever believe anything coming out of his mouth are long gone. It will get worse if and when the perjury and tax evasion charges ever come. I would be more surprised if they don't come at this point.

Josh, in all likelihood you've unknowingly rooted for a steroid user. Let's not make this into some silly pissing match about fan allegiance.

So does Bonds get suspended because he hasn't apologized? Is that what it takes to be forgiven of this issue? If Bonds gets suspended, then you have to follow suit with the others, you can't just pick and choose because one guy is a jerk. Nowhere does it say you have to be a nice guy to play baseball or to keep from being singled out from other who break the same rules.

On another point of why Bonds is being singled out, he's about to break a beloved record and that tends to bring out the worst in some people to keep it from happening. I'm only comparing Bonds to Hank Aaron in this instance, but was Aaron such a bad guy that he should have received death threats? No, it was only because he was going to break a long standing record.

Trust me, I have very strong suspicions about Nomar. It does not make me happy at all, and it's another reason I'm glad he's gone.

I can't imagine how disappointed I'd be if, say, Jason Varitek or David Ortiz were caught up in this same web. But let us be very clear about this: they are not.

I know it's not truly relevant, but I suppose fans are more willing to forgive a player based on their public persona. Giambi is an easy-going guy who just wants to be liked. Sheffield is almost cut from the same cloth as Bonds, but he appears to embrace his teammates rather than set himself above & beyond them.

I'm a diehard Yankees fan, and I really can't explain or make excuses for Sheff's actions. Honestly as a fan I'm getting tired of the whole issue as a whole. Selig really needs to get his act together and make this go away - set up an *effective* testing plan, and be consistent with the suspensions already.

I think Pete's right about being more forgiving for players who seem likeable. (We, as fans, will never know who these guys really are.) Part of this, I hasten to add, may be our latent racism, since the players that we've all defined as "good guys" in this scandal are white -- McGwire, Giambi -- and the bad guys are black -- Bonds and Sheffield. (Note that I wrote "we." I'm not exempting myself.)

Now, there's a lot of complicating factors here that go well beyond race, but I think we ought to admit that it probably plays a role in our assumptions. For that reason, our host is right that everyone suspected out to be investigated, not only the public's appointed villians.

I like the idea of the fans shunning Bonds. Deny him what seems to be very important to him. As part of that, I'd like to see fans this year throw each and every Bonds home run ball back on the field (even at home games), as if to say, "Sorry Barry, we don't recognize that as a home run." Just imagine a Bonds moon shot landing in McCovey Cove - some boater scoops it out of the water, relays it up to a fan in the RF bleachers, who then throws it back on the field. It would be great.

I am of the opinion that use was widespread (maybe approaching 12 % of players) and that owners and leagues turned a purposeful blind eye to the situation, in large part because the results seemed to help the game and the negatives would be borne entirely by the individual players. (This turns out not to be true, but it seemed true.) If the book is right about Bonds, it was only after he saw that the league was prepared to reward rather than punish McGwire and Sosa that he said, in essence, "Okay, I'll play too."

Therefore, it seems to me that any fan who wants to shun Bonds needs to at least withhold approval of all sorts of other players (don't forget the pitchers) and, more importantly, every team and both leagues. This means turning off baseball.

It may also mean boycotting one's self, unless you can honestly say you didn't think steroids were involved in the game. Personally, I chose to ignore the issue.

Or -- as the other honest alternative -- fans should say, we all let this get out of hand, and we have to treat the records as a separate era, like the dead ball era, and move on from here.

Steroids were treated like drugs under many prohibition era, or like alcohol in the Prohibition. The use was widespread enough, and the wrong not so clear to all, that people didn't care to enforce it. To retroactively get on a high horse (backwards in the saddle?) and selectively punish a few that we catch doesn't seem to me like the best or most honest course to follow.

"I can't imagine how disappointed I'd be if, say, Jason Varitek or David Ortiz were caught up in this same web. But let us be very clear about this: they are not."

All we know for sure is that they didn't use the same trainer as Bonds & Sheffield - I don't know WHO to believe is clean anymore...

As for David's suggestion that the fans turn their backs on Bonds when he comes to bat, I'd be more than a little concerned about him fouling off a few pitches . . . A couple purposeful line drives down the third base line would really add a special touch to his status as a baseball villain.

Joe,

Everyone can duck and cover when they hear the bat hit the ball. :-)

I have to strongly disagree with the writer who said it has to do with our "latent racism", labeling the white guys as "good guys" and Bonds and Shef as "bad". What about Sosa? He's not white and as far as I can tell, even after the cork incident, everybody loves Sammy. What does that do to your claim? It's funny how no conversation can go very long without that word being brought up.

I got my first chance to watch Barry this season yesterday on television. I wasn't sure how it would feel to watch him come up to at bat, or how I would feel when he made his first scoring impact. Well, I was faced with it right away after he hit a HR to continue his Spring Training tear he's on. I think the reasons that some Giants fans want him to be suspended is the "out of sight, out of mind" idea. There is a deep confliction when you want to root for your team and you know the the centerpiece, integral component was an avid steroid user. It's hard for me to root against Barry but still root for the Giants, so the easy way out would be to have him suspended so that other Giants fans and I could avoid that confliction.

The point is that suspending Barry is equivilant to what Barry did; taking the easy way out. Like Capybara said above "To retroactively get on a high horse (backwards in the saddle?) and selectively punish a few that we catch doesn't seem like the best or most honest course to follow."

I wish people would stop saying it was not against the rules back then. It was. Baseball banned steroids in 1991 when they were made illegal to possess without a prescription by the federal govt. Baseball just didnt test for them till 2002.

Retroactive punishment for what, too? Yes, it's illegal to use steroids for anything other than what a physician prescribed, but baseball didn't have any rules on this stuff forever.

I don't particularly like Bonds, but as many others have said, you can't go back and punish him for what at the time wasn't even against the rules of the game. Sure, shame on baseball for not trying to nip this in the bud in the 90's when steroids made their significant inroads to the game. But the players were playing in the Wild West, and to hold them accountable now for rules that didn't exist at the time simply isn't fair, whether it's Bonds, Sheffield, Giambi, or Jack McNoname.

The rules are in place now, and testing is going on. Any criticism should be directed insofar as it might improve the test process now and going forward.

Mike -- I think even you know that you're oversimplifying what I wrote. I'm hardly pinning all of this on racism; I think it's one ingredient in this recipe. I wish I had put a qualifier in there -- saying that the good guys are often white or something to that effect -- but I wrote what I wrote.

Regardless, Sosa was certainly beloved in 1999 but was run out of Chicago as his skills rapidly declined. I didn't follow the story closely, but as an outsider it was stunning to me how a guy who was the toast of the city could have been receiving boos a couple years later. There are many explanations for this, just like there are many explanations for why Bonds is hated today. Heck, Derek Jeter was booed in Yankee Stadium once. You can look it up.

I've never hated an athlete as much as I hated Bill Lambier, the Pistons' center [sic] in the '80s, and he was white (presuming, first, that he was human). But let's not delude ourselves into thinking that race plays absolutely no part in what makes someone like Giambi "likeable" or someone we'd like to get a beer with.

For example: I was stunned at how quickly people seemed to forget (or at least forgive) Kenny Rogers's exploits last year, which my cyncial side was positive was a roid-rage episode. Just positive. Maybe I'm wrong here, but Rogers appears to be as big a jerk as Bonds is. Randy ("Get out of my face") Johnson doesn't seem cuddly, either.

Bonds, from all public appearances, is a tremendous jerk. He's also almost certainly a liar, a tax cheat, and a baseball cheat. I'm not defending him. I'm arguing that we should prepare to throw the book at every suspect, not just the ones that we don't like.

I look forward to cheering for Barry on opening day. He's been behind SF and whether or not he took steroids in the past, he's brought us a lot of great memories. He's never failed a drug test and he's clean now and on the undergoing the same testing as the rest of baseball. There's nothing we can do to change the past for Barry or anyone. Giants fans will be behind him and I'm proud of that. I hope he breaks the record with a homer into McCovey Cove so he can receive the proper ovation. I think most Giants fans echo my sentiment. We're stand by Barry.

Mike & The Mad Dog (one a Yankee fan, the other a Mets fan) got this exactly right, I think: It is difficult, legally, to get a suspension to stick at this point. But Selig has every right to -- and should -- strike the records of McGuire, Bonds, and others who attained their numbers through an unfair and unnatural advantage.

(There also seems to be some confusion between Jason and Jeremy Giambi above. If Jeremy Giambi ever injected steroids, it didn't do him much good.)

And kudos to Josh for pointing out the flagrant pro-Yankee bias of the original post, which tried to change the subject from the news (that Sheffield was a much bigger user than previously known or admitted) to the same old debate about Bonds.

Lastly: Yeah, I'm sure there are lots of other guilty players. If credible news comes out about others, I'll decry their usage, too. But that is not an excuse to ignore the known users, such as Sheffield and Giambi.