In time people may forgive him. Look at Pete Rose. He was a vilified scumbag for years, and then he came clean about his gambling scandal. Now look at him: he’s got a [horrible] new reality show on TLC and there’s not as much hatred toward him.

Bonds and Clemens are engaged in tactics much like Armstrong, and this makes them less likable and less likely to be forgiven right away. But people like Pettitte and Giambi, and probably Jose Canseco too – they have been upfront about it, don’t shy away from it, and have tried to negate the damage done.

If you lie and then come clean, people hate you because you lied to them, not for the drugs.

Or if you lie and then more evidence comes out, obviously theyll hate you for lying as well.

Its a good rule in life that you learn once you get older…clean up the situation immediately, because it can only get messier.

No one will ever no who has and who hasn’t – only bits and pieces of a much bigger story.

The only people that even get to make the argument that it isn’t fair are the ones who know they didn’t use. Again, we won’t ever know who to believe. Our guesses don’t count.

But even those I just mentioned also made a choice – albeit the right one. They took the high road. And the high road means staying on the high road – not bitching about it now.

As for the Hall of Fame, it needs to wear it. Any real hall of history recounts it all – the good, the bad, and the ugly. If it’s just a fraternity, then that’s not for the fans.

If and when MLB learns how to be transparent, let me know. Until then, it’s better to wear the past, be thankful for the present, and look forward to the future.

We are talking about the same Barry Bonds who’s paying for college for Bryan Stow’s children, yes?

Of course, that is a financial drop in the bucket for someone who’s made as much money as Bonds has. But it’s not like he’s actively against equal marriage rights for all, unlike Jeff Kent.

In fact, the court of public opinion (which has shown it will indict those players even on the slightest suspicion that they MAY have been NEAR someone who took PEDs–eg Jeff Bagwell; or hearsay: the Piazza backne thing) renders admission or non-admission moot anyway in terms of HOF votes and the public’s view of someone.

Personally, I think admitting, at the outset, that a player took PEDs is a sign that the player could be trying to rebuild his own character.

Furthermore the argument that they were just so damned good the players couldn’t help themselves is ridiculous. Why should you not blame athletes for trying to get an edge using PEDs when it comes to the HOF? Those that are proven to have been users don’t deserve entry in my opinion.

I don’t blame athletes for using in the sense that they profited heavily monetarily and fame-wise. If they felt it was worth it, fine, that’s their choice. But how that is then carried over into being required to honor them in the HOF doesn’t make any sense to me.

The Players Union made a special point of saying that without knowing what the substance was that Ortiz’s supposedly blind test turned up, it shouldn’t be assumed that he used

Huh? If he failed a test, it doesn’t matter what “substance” he took, he still used a PED. Whether it was a tainted supplement, a supplement with a banned substance, or steroids, he used. Not sure how failing a drug test could equal “not using”.

Note: He never claimed it was a false positive or improper testing protocol. He picked the OJ defense and reporters have let him avoid any scrutiny since that date.

I have seen a lot of former cyclists come out and confess to doping abuse, such as David Millar, Tyler Hamilton, Floyd Landis, Thomas Dekker, Steven de Jongh, Danny Nelissen, and Jonathan Vaughters. In most of those cases, they were truly apologetic. They were apologetic for using doping, for trying to cover up doping use, and for fighting the charges. They tell the entire story, explain the situation, describe how they made the decision to start doping, while fully accepting their own responsibility in the matter. Armstrong on the other hand, only confesses to what is already known, and he does so in an orchestrated manner which seems to minimize his own responsibility, and only after he was completely backed against the wall. That is what makes him so insincere.

Don’t blame athletes for trying to get an edge, just because the PEDs became designer and worked TOO well.

We’d all be much better simply being thankful for the new testing changes, and letting all who deserve entry into the Hall of Fame (PEDs, warts, and all) actually get in.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2013/01/leitch-lance-armstrong.html

Here’s the link http://sports.yahoo.com/news/questions-oprah-should-ask-lance-armstrong-230849439.html

ps Nike was a typo…meant to type Trek.

Lance has threatened people and done some messed up things to keep from being prosecuted, but please don’t make up crap out of thin air to support your disgust. Greg LeMond’s company faltered first when Carbonframes were producing the bikes and even Greg LeMond blamed it on underfunding and mismanagement by his father. He later did a liscensing deal with Trek to manufacture/sell some bikes under his old company name. After he starting making claims about Lance and some other riders associated with Trek, they told him to shut up or he’d be dropped. Nike never even entered into the picture. As far as the evidence shows, Trek was angry due to the bad publicity from LeMond about their featured riders. In other words, Trek didn’t want LeMond hurting the sales of ALL their non-LeMond products. Obviously, LeMond was correct about the doping, but he’s also been proven to be a bafoon when it comes to marketing. Trek put up with LeMond for 7 years after his first shots at Armstrong, it’s not like they suddenly dropped him. He made many, many more statements in years to come as well. The settled out of court in the end and LeMond got to keep the LeMond Racing Cycles name and Trek donated a couple hundred thousand to LeMond’s charity.

I doubt Armstrong was ever personally involved in any of Trek’s tactics to silence LeMond. The fact is LeMond became bad for business for Trek and they didn’t want his mouth damaging their profits. It’s actually pretty impressive that they tolerated him for as long as they did, since his bikes were never a really big seller under Trek distribution.

I remember the backlash being pretty awful. He was openly condemned by Brian Williams on the NBC Nightly News (which is kind of hilarious considering he’s about the only person Brian WIlliams every condemned), was ripped apart for saying that he didn’t think steroids helped him hit home runs runs and was basically called a phony by any and everybody.

I came away from the McGwire debacle wondering why anyone in their right mind would ever admit to doing steroids if that was the result.

However, as I sit here typing this I constantly notice out of the corner of my eye the ‘Livestrong’ bracelet on my left wrist – that doesn’t make him a scumbag, it makes him a good charitable individual.

What he did for cancer research was commendable, and if the only transgression he had was using PEDs and lieing about it, I think most of us would say that benefits outweighed the cost.

However, as Chris mentioned, Armstrong also went after all of his detractors, and did everything possible to crucify them in the press. He tried to destroy people’s lives so in court, and the court of public opinion, they would be tainted in their quest to out his PED use.

That part is abhorrent. He deserves to be punished, if not sued in civil court to make those people’s lives whole again.

It shouldn’t even be a question as to whether it’s better to come clean or continue the lies. The denials are especially awful when they throw others under the bus for telling the truth.

The media, in most areas, not just sports, is bad. They writers/media members themselves aren’t totally to blame as the system incentivizes poorly researched, hastily written, disingenuous garbage. The biggest problem is that the public has stopped holding media members accountable for bad work, so there’s no reason for anybody to change.

Furthermore, out of all of the players that have tested positive and all of the players who were mentioned in the Mitchell report: How many of the had the Executive Director of the MLBPA sitting next to them during a press conference and being so vocal in defending the player? I can only recall this happening with Ortiz

*To Paperlions point: I had absolutely NO idea Michael Morse tested positive for PEDs.