Like I'd noted, I really liked both programs. There was a part in the 'You Don't Know Bo" program though that bugged me, and is still bugging me (approximately 64 minutes into the program):
Jeremy Schaap: "If Bo had come around a decade later, people would not have appreciated his heroics the same way because there would have been an assumption that he was on steroids."
Chuck Klosterman: "If there was a new Bo Jackson, that [steroid use] would be a suspicion. That somebody who had that speed and that size must somehow be cheating."
Boomer Esiason: "I've known Bo over the years, you know, and I can tell when you see a steroid guy, you can tell. This was not a steroid guy.This was a guy who was given a God-given body that any of us would die for."
***
Jeremy Schaap: "Steroids have taken away our ability to really marvel at incredible feats, so, we're lucky that got Bo Jackson when we did. Because if he'd done the things that he did just a little bit later, we would have had to have been skeptical."So in other words, had Bo played in the late 1990s/early 2000s he'd have been labeled with the [unrebuttable/irrefutable(*)] presumption that he was a steroid cheat?
(*)'unrebuttable/irrefutable' as in 'once a writer (reporter/columnist/TV 'talking head', blogger, etc.) has claimed (or even insinuated) that an athlete used steroids - whether supported by any evidence (much less 'legitimate' evidence) - that athlete is automatically guilty until proven innocent (which of course cannot be proven).Personally, I find that whole interchange sad.
[Street editorializing]: I find it a sad commentary on what athletes can never be again. Part of the fault of course lies with the actual 'steroid cheats', but IMO more of it (now, and likely in the future) rests on the shoulders of an irresponsible (or in some case unscrupulous) and unaccountable press. [See e.g. Jeff Pearlman]. [/Street editorializing][Street editorializing ETA]: How about the "clean" teammates, coaches, trainers, managers, owners, and a commissioner, who all turned a blind eye? They shoulder some blame for the steroid era as well.
Yes, them too... (but as a matter of course W. Huber Selig the baseball 'press' will always top my 'pyramid of loathing'...)
