August 8, 2007
Morning Roundup: Bonds Did It Edition
Good morning, Washington, and welcome to a world with a new home run record. That's right: Barry Bonds hit his 756th career homer last night against our very own Washington Nationals. We're sure there are some mixed feelings among the Nats today about being immortalized in a video clip that'll likely be replayed for decades to come.
Four Shot During National Night Out: Last night was the National Night Out, a crime-prevention event where citizens make their presence felt on the street. It was also the city's third "All Hands on Deck" initiative, during which police increase their numbers and activity. Unfortunately these measures didn't stop four people from being shot within an hour of one another last night, as the Post reports. NNO is about more than just preventing crime on a single night — still, this is discouraging news.
More Heat Advisories: It shouldn't come as much of a surprise, but we'll say it anyway — today's going to be unpleasantly hot. WTOP tells us that the National Weather Service has issued another heat advisory for the afternoon. The heat index is expected to reach between 105 and 110°F.
Newseum Opening Delayed: The Post reports that the hall of all things journalistic will be opening its new digs a little later than planned. The Newseum's original Rossyln location closed in 2002 as its parent organization began the process of building a new facility. That new building, located on Pennsylvania Avenue, was originally slated to open on October 15. Representatives now say that it'll be open by the end of November.
Briefly Noted: U.S. Marshal indicted for incident in D.C. Superior Court... Accused child rapist back in custody after being released due to problems finding a translator... As many as twenty handguns stolen from Manassas gun shop...
This Day In DCist: One year ago we talked to the Broken Lizard comedy troupe and said goodbye to Livan Hernandez.
Image by Flickr user guano, used under a Creative Commons license.
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Does anyone have info about the pedestrian that was struck at Pennsylvania/4th/North Carolina SE yesterday around rush hour?
Asterix
* x 756
Only 112 left to reach the all time professional baseball record of 868 career homeruns by Sadaharu Oh of the Yomiuri Giants. Keep rubbing in the cream and clear Barry.
Hopefully his reign will be short. With luck someone without a taint of cheating, such as Alex Rodriguiz or Ryan Howard, will surpass him, and he and his asterix can slink off into obscurity.
Apparently, Cap Lounge burned down again. Can anyone confirm? If true, where will all the Marines go to get denied access? They are running out of places.
Oh get over yourselves. You’re naive to think barry is dirty and everyone else in baseball like a-rod is clean. Heck bud selig is just as dirty as any of the players. Congratulations Barry. 756 and beyond.
It's "asterisk"
Bonds hit a home run? Who cares, the Nats won, and are now tied for fourth place in the east!!!
I don't know about you, but I was talking about this .
It's a little known fact that Barry is a huge fan of French comic books.
I don't have the knack of this href stuff yet. I meant to link to this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asterix
The millionaires of pro sports take advantage of advances in weight-training, nutrition, and medicine to surpass records set by the ordinary mortals of the last century. Does rotator cuff surgery or knee surgery rate an asterisk in the record books? Bonds says he played by the rules, and changed as the rules changed. Barry might benefit from a congeniality implant, but I have read the same thing about the Babe.
No kidding...I care more that the Nats won! Those crazy over-achievers...
You'll see Bacsik's name in the next version of Trivial Pursuit. Don't forget the "Jr"...
And congrats to Bonds for a monumental achievement.
Yeah I guess you could call what he did "weight-training, nutrition and medicine." With an emphasis on the medicine.
I will say it does seem like a lot of the anger with the steroids era is focused on him, which is a bit unfair. Others have been busted or implicated. But he's by far the highest profile player linked to 'roids, so I guess he gets most of the heat.
Bonds is not the only player to have used steroids in the past several years. Yet somehow, he's the only one with 756 homeruns. Hmmm...
Bonds has all the attention and therefore we think the most about his steroid use. But because baseball didn't test for steroids, we will never know who used them. All we know is that Neifi Perez got busted 3 times for them and he has 1 homerun this year. More pitchers have been busted for steroids than hitters, it seems.
Bonds is one of the greatest hitters ever. Period. His record will be surpassed in 5 years.
I realize Bond's is a great hitter. Steroids do not automatically make you a great hitter. He had plenty of talent to spare before he supposedly started using steroids. That's what makes this even more sad to me.
But look at some of the players who have been accused of using steroids: Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, Palmero. All were very good-to-excellent hitters before hand. All starting hitting HRs in bunches after. Steroids did help them gain a little extra power. They already had the hand-eye coordination and swing. It's just sad they all felt they needed to juice up a bit.
Who cares if Bonds used steroids, except for the poor fans in SF who have had to latch onto him in order to ignore a constantly struggling franchise?
Me, I'm thrilled. The Padres won, , the Nats won, and the Giants lost. Good day.
#15 - The record broken in 5 yrs? Who would be doing that?
And reid, Ryan Howard will not come close to breaking the record. He's already 27 yrs old even though he's a second yr player. A-Rod, will come close or break it. But even for him, it'll be hard, he may get injured along the way and that will set him back.
I do feel like the record is tainted, b/c it is. There's not getting around that. But it is what it is, like it's been said, pitchers used steroids more than anyone else, and so did other hitters, so oh well.
Can someone please point to where it says pitchers used steroids more than hitters? I'm not completely discounting it, but I can only think of a couple of pitchers who have been accused or rumored to have used steroids. Meanwhile, plenty of hitters make the headlines -- Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, Palmero, Giambi, etc.
According to the Baseball Almanac web site, an equal number of pitchers and position players have been caught by MLB.
Scratch that. I misread the entry. It says three more pitchers than position players have been busted by MLB (10 v 7), if you count the recent Neifi Perez suspention. Four more (10 v 6) if you don't.