The Daily News
September 17, 2006
Just because Lance Armstrong inspired cancer survivors around the world, doesn't mean he didn't cheat to win the Tour de France.
You wonder sometimes how much we'd believe Barry Bonds if he had Lance Armstrong's back story. You wonder how we would look at everything if Bonds were the cancer survivor, if he was the one who had raised all this money with the yellow bracelets.
We are supposed to believe Lance Armstrong wasn't on performance-enhancing drugs because they never got him with a positive test. There has been no positive test on Barry Bonds, either. There probably never will be, even though Major League Baseball wasn't testing in all the years we now want them to have tested Bonds. Baseball sure wasn't testing the year he hit 73 home runs.
Armstrong says the French were out to get him, and that Dick Pound of the World Anti-Doping Agency is out to get him, and any member of the media who doubts him is out to get him. We're supposed to take it on faith that at a time when using dope was this prevalent in cycling - the way it was in baseball - that the top guy in history wasn't doing anything.
Even though he was dominating his sport even more than Bonds was dominating his.
Armstrong's old buddy Floyd Landis tested positive this year after winning the Tour de France. You know the drill. Now it comes out that two of Armstrong's former teammates have confessed to using EPO. Armstrong says this has nothing to do with him. So add the New York Times to the list of all those out to get Lance Armstrong.
Is Armstrong an American sports hero for all times? Or does he ride off into history with the same cloud of suspicion that stays over Bonds and will stay over him as long as he hits home runs and for the rest of his life?
Is Armstrong every wonderful thing we wanted to believe about him, and he desperately wants us to believe about him, or is he someone who was as fast staying ahead of the testers as he was on that bike of his?
If people all over the world liked him less - even loved him less - would they believe him less?
These are real good questions.
Armstrong's case, and it is a good one, is that they never got him on a positive test. The case against him goes something like this: If his teammates were doing it and a protégé like Landis was doing it, if this was an era in cycling when so many people were using so much dope that there is talk of shutting the sport down until they clean it up, how come we're supposed to take it on faith that Armstrong wasn't doing anything?
All we know this week, from the Times, is Frankie Andreu, the former captain of Armstrong's United States Postal Service Team, and another unidentified member of the team confessed to using the endurance-boosting drug, EPO, back in the day.
"It doesn't prove he did it," Dick Pound of WADA said. "But you look all around him and everyone else is doing it, so what should you think?"
Armstrong says Pound doesn't like him and he doesn't like Pound and this has been going on for years. Armstrong says Pound is a "blowhard" and Pound has clearly believed for years that Armstrong cheated along with a lot of other guys of that era. Pound usually loses this one, because he is going up against Lance Armstrong, American hero.
Even if Barry Bonds breaks the great Henry Aaron's all-time home run record, somebody like Alex Rodriguez could break Bonds' record someday. You can see that. Nobody will ever win the Tour de France seven straight times the way Lance Armstrong did. What he did will stand forever.
And the people who doubt him, who think he was as good at beating the testing as he was at beating the other riders, will always have those doubts. People will always believe Bonds cheated to have had the home run surge he had the second half of his career.
Maybe the French were out to get Armstrong, as he says. But I don't think Juliet Macur of the Times is. I think she just follows this story wherever it takes her. This week it took her to the former captain of Armstrong's team and another guy now. Just because Armstrong raised all this money, just because he inspired cancer survivors all over the world, doesn't mean he didn't do it.
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Every time I think the White Sox are ready to make some kind of big move, they don't.
Anybody who thinks the Mets can win without Pedro at the top of his form did everything except watch the season.
Even the Big Red Machine never had a batting order like the one Joe Torre now has with the New York Yankees.
It is not just the most expensive batting order in the history of the known universe.
It is the most balanced.
And it is the best.
It makes you wonder who gets the blame if the Yankees can't win this time.
Pavano's kind of like our Paris Hilton, right?
Here's sort of an interesting question for Gene Upshaw:
If it will eventually take blood testing to convince fans that NFL players aren't using performance-enhancing drugs, why would he fight that?
If you're afraid of blood tests, it's not just because you're afraid of needles, believe me.
There is nothing sillier in sports than reading about the producers of football pre-game shows smart-mouthing each other about whose show is best.
What is kind of neat is that these guys think we care what they think.
Sometimes you think that for all of Carlos Beltran's numbers, for every great thing he did for the Mets this season, Carlos Delgado is the guy who did the most to change the whole batting order.
Bob Woodward made an awful lot of guys want to get into this business back in the '70s, and now he just looks like a caddie for George Bush.
Bush isn't just content with rewriting the history of his war in Iraq, by the way.
Now he wants to rewrite the terms of the Geneva Convention.
Barry Bonds is pretty much moving up on the kind of home run season he used to have before his head and body began to grow at the rate of gas prices, right?
If John Gotti Jr., is writing kids' books now, the next step for him - as he continues to grow as an artist - is probably poetry.
"There once was a rat from Rikers. . ."
You know.
Along those lines.
The Giants need to win a game in Philly this afternoon so they don't turn into a Yogi line two weeks into the season.
The line about how it sure gets late early around here.
I still think Cris Collinsworth is the one who should be sitting next to Al on Sunday nights, because next to Phil Simms he's the best analyst out there.
My favorite moment at the Open last weekend is when Maria Sharapova was telling her old man how much she loved him and the camera showed him ignoring her while he talked on his cell phone.
If the Twins win the Central and Justin Morneau drives in 130 runs or so, he'll probably wonder what he didn't do to win the MVP award in the American League this season.
By the end last Sunday, Dick Cheney didn't look like a guest on "Meet the Press," he looked like somebody who wouldn't answer Sam Waterston's questions on "Law and Order."
Russert against him wasn't even close to being a fair fight.
Condolences today to my friend Michael Kay on the passing this week of his mother, Rose, after such a long and terrible season of pain for the Kay family.
Happy birthday today to Christopher Charles Lupica, college man.
May you always be as happy in your life as you are right now.
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