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It's likely someone just stuffed the ballot box for him. The Pirates practically admitted last year that they had employees that were doing nothing but voting for Jason Bay until he became a starter at the game in Pittsburgh. The Giants or someone with MLB who wanted the stoyrline probably did the same thing.

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I know for a fact (from a Pirates employee) that they had hired a staff to do nothing but create screen names and vote for Jason Bay ,to the max all day long. It's a joke. The system needs to be changed--The teams manipulate the system for their players to be "voted in". The Pirates also tied All Star ticket packages to Season Ticket subscriptions--You had to pay for 2 full season packages in order to be considered for All Star tickets !!

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I THINK THE ENTIRE STAFF AT ESPN VOTED FOR HIM
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

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Racism is the real factor in fans hating bonds. As you can see the majority of fans that hate him are white. It just hurts their hearts to see another Black athelete conquer the sport that they love so much. He has shattered all the white records and will go down as the number one homerun man of all time. Its just the fact that it will be a Black man known as the number one homerun man of all time. And a number of die hard baseball fans who happen to be white and still regard babe ruth and mickey mantle as the greatest are and will be heartbroken. They have done their best to overshadow Hank Aaron with babe ruth and mickey mantle and now they wish to associate performance inhancement speculations with bonds to overshadow his greatness. But too bad b/c its reality... Two Black men named Hank Aaron and Barry Bonds are the greatest of all time... Ohhh I know that hurt!

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Racism is the real factor for hating bonds. The majority of fans who hate him are white. They just hate the fact that another Black man will go down as the greatest of all time. They have tried to overshadow Hank Aaron with babe ruth and mickey mantle and today they are trying to stigmatize performance enhancement with Barry Bonds to overshadow his greatness. But america is just going to have to face it. Sometimes the truth hurts. Hank Aaron was far a greater homerunner than babe ruth and mickey mantle and Barry Bonds is a greater homerunner than those two and may oneday beat the great Hank Aaron whose success has been pushed under the rug to protect the lilly white feelings. Its time to face up to it! Barry Bonds a Black man will be the greatest of all time.

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yea and bush won the last election not

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Hey #7 craig The Babe made baseball and your full of shit always the race card

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Larry, I understand what you are saying, it is possible, and the sudden turnaround has been very odd, but seriously...

Soriano his batting .304, with 15 HR, .352 OBP, and .544 SLG with an OPS of 130.

Bonds is batting .304, with 16 HR, a .516 (!) OBP, a .603 SLG with an OPS of 197 (!!). And this, as you said, with him being surrounded by a completely crappy lineup. Soriano has Lee AND Ramierez.

My point is Bonds deserves it, no matter what you want to claim about ballet stuffing. Bonds is having the better year (at 43!) How can you argue Soriano deserves it when you look at the numbers? You've made it clear you hate Bonds, so you are just as biased as the so called ballot stuffers you are complaining about here.

Lunkily, no one gives a damn about your opinion but yourself.

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*****, **********. ***********. *******, **********. ****************, *******. **********. ******, f****** ****. **********!
That's what I think of B*rry B*nds.

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The racism angle might have some merit. Likely many points are actually correct to a point. But the amount of anger, disgust directed at Mr. Bonds, to me, is completely unfair. He is being used as the scapegoat by the real culprit in this fiasco. I am amazed that Bud Selig doesn't get the wrath, the lion share to all of it. He allowed power numbers to blow up. He either knew the game was dirty and let it be to "get the fans back" after the strike on his watch. Or, to me worse yet, he is so bushie imcompetent that he missed it. Many players are being chastened at this point. Mr. Bonds being still active and thus in the daily sports papers getting the most of it. Guys like McGuire being shunned by the Hall and fans and will continue (the fact that he is white takes some of merit away from race issue). To me, I choose to keep it simple:
Babe Ruth "invented" the homerun. Hammerin' Hank Aaron perfected it. The Selig juice ball era perverted it. Willie Horton and Kirby Puckett will always be my heroes though open for a third and seems to be a lot of class acts out there to captivate the imagination. The guy I watch the most as a fan currently is Mr. Sheffield as he is not only a great baseball player he is a very complex, to me wonderfully so, man.

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RACISM!!! Give me a break! Its always racism to some of you. Its screamed so often that its losing any meaning to most people. Bonds is a cheater, plain and simple. He will break the record and should have*** all over his a**. And before you label me a racist. I feel the same towards McGwire, Giambi, and any of the other "roid" user that have disgraced the game. Its not about black and white, its about right and wrong.

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Being a die-hard cubs fan, I can say that no body made it a point to stop voting for Soriano. However as they will say this is a "business" move for MLB. Put him on the field get more viewers sell more commercials, make more money, its that simple. This is not rocket science. The system is set up to be this way, I enjoy voting with the punch ballots at the park, and not this on line stuff.

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i've given up making arguments here, but i will say that larry brown does a pretty good job keeping his bonds bias to a minimum. it is obvious he hates him, but i'd put him towards the top of bloggers here trying to keep objective on bonds.

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Amazed when I go to see a game and see the support for players like Sammy Sosa, Bary Bonds, Arod, the list ofcourse endless in a league that hires english coaches to teach english to the non native speaker.

If you think that the fans of this game are racist- then you are doing as the ESPN commercial says and

1.talking sports out of your Ass.
2.You have never been to a game and seen the fans of Pudge Rodrigues or any of the non white players--they are mostly white and love these guys like Rock Stars.
3.You got issues your parents or some jerk taught you in jail while he was making you into the sweet woman you are, and you have fallen short of your potential to be a man and stand to be judeged by your character and need to play that BS.

The white fans of baseball embrace the non whites and accpet them as team members- even after the Steroid scandals for Bary BOnds etc- when he hits a homer his fans go nuts...

anyone spouting racism is clueless and need not dirty sports with their feeble low self esteem.

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I personally don't think Racism is a factor hear...I am not racist at all I am white and have black people in my family...I just think Bonds is an a** and he knows himself that he sucks bcz he wouldnt have to use steroids if he was good...He and as well as any other sports player who uses "roids" should be left go and be stripped of any hall of fame title...I love sports big NFL fan but dont agree with using...Kids get suspended or even expelled from sports and school when they use and get caught, so why not the adults, they're supposed to be role models for our children...way to go Bonds and everyone else who uses...Bonds you do not deserve anything...

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The race card holds no merit with me either. Bond's is a cheater plain and simple. He has done everything but all out admit it (he practically did that at one point). Don't get me wrong, he is a great player but the roids will tarnish his record as far as I am concerned, just like McGuire, Sosa, Giambi and so on (yes I said Sosa). I am white and as far as I am concerned, Aaron is the Home Run King but as far as the greatest, sorry I believe that Willie Mays had the best all around game. And if he hadn't had to play half of his career in the Polo Grounds and the other half in Candlestick (like Bonds) he would have hit 900 home runs. Aaron played a great deal of his career in Fulton County Stadium (AKA the Launching Pad). And as far as Ruth, the way pitching has evolved over the years I don't think he would have even hit 500. Now Ted Williams, thats another story, had he not missed the better part of 5 seasons in the prime of his career to the wars he may have hit 700+.

As far as the balloting goes, he probably does deserve to play in the game but making up 19,000 votes in a week, Bull Shi*! If it wasn't the fine fanes in San Fran helping him out, it was Bud Selig and MLB. Imagine, the All Star Game In San Francisco without Bonds in it? I don't think Selig was going to allow that to happen. Just my two cents.

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Race is definitely not the main factor when it comes to the hatred for Bonds. He is not press-friendly, and he has a questionable hisory with fan incidents. But to say that it doesn't play a part in the minds of some fans and a few sportswriters is just as ridiculous!

While it is stupid to claim everything that happens to someone black has to do with race, it is just as stupid to claim that race NEVER has ANYTHING to do with it.

You can get tired of hearing race all you want. That doesn't mean it's never an issue.

That being said, Larry Brown is obviously extremely biased against Bonds. And to whomever had the nerve to say that he hides his hatred well, you must not be reading any of his blogs...

Regardless, Larry knows how to "earn" responses on his blog. So he is doing his job, which is NOT to tell the truth or report facts, but to give an OPINION about topics that will entice readers to respond.

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Larry, Stuffing the All Star ballot doesn't violate the rules of the game, just like the use of anabolic steroids prior to 2003. Seems to me that technically Bonds is not guilty on both counts.

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Hi As a native of the bay area I have been a fan of Barry Bonds since his pro career. (even high school) No one has ever had the eye-hand coordination, remember golden glove, remember speed, remember genes, and no drug or steroid can give a baseball player all that. We in california all voted for Barry Bonds in the final five days, because he is the greatest baseball player EVER and will never be replaced. All players and all people who do not believe in Barrys God Given talent are jealous- and you all are a bunch of losers. Why don't all of you take steroids and just try to be Barry Bonds - it could never happen. You are all pathetic Pat GO BARRY - I LOVE YOU

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No, Hank Aaron is one of the greatest baseball players of all time. Barry Bonds is a cheater and doesn't deserve to be in the record books because of it. Anyone can pump themselves full of steroids to the point where any contact with the ball is going to send it out of the park.

Compare Barry Bonds of the 80's-90's to modern day Barry Bonds. How does any person undergo that kind of physical transformation naturally? I don't care how much you work out, you just don't put on that much mass without growth hormone. His neck circumference tripled in size for chrissakes!

If it can be proven that he took steroids (and it's pretty obvious that he did) he should not be in the record books, period. Of course, the MLB isn't going to pursue it seriously, they've been tacitly approving of steroid use for years because they know home runs sell tickets.

He was a good player before the roids, and he's still a pretty good player without them since he's presumably stopped using them because of the heat (and his HR stats dropped drastically at the same time, funny coincidence). But he doesn't deserve a title he cheated to get.

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