The Jammy, a frequent commenter to Independent Sources, is reporting that Barry “Bond’s lawyers plan to use California’s Unfair Competition Law, Business and Professions Code section 17200, to prevent authors Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams and their publishers from profiting from the book.” (Update: the suit has since been rejected.)

It is hardly news when a not-so-nice guy who makes tens of millions of dollars cheating and then uses some of that money to go after do-gooders who happen to threaten his juiced-up world. What is interesting, however, is Jammy’s analysis about the applying this same law against MLB instead of just a couple of reporters:

Let’s apply California’s Unfair Competition Law NOT to Bond’s suit against The S.F. Chronicle, and the authors of the book. Let’s say instead, that Bond’s lawyers decided to sue Major League Baseball and Bud Selig and Donald Fehr and The Player’s Union instead, using the same law. Here we go…

The one person in this case falls under the umbrella of Major League Baseball. The powers that be in that arena marketed something, THE LONG BALL. And they did it by ignoring the steroid use….It’s Bizness….Major League Baseball, allowed an unlawful act, Steroids, to be used for their own personal profit. Obviously when Mcguire and Sosa were chasing Maris in 1998 by employing unlawful methods, steroids, Bond’s, who was acting lawfully , by all accounts at the time, was put at an unfair disadvantage thus forcing him to employ the very same unlawful methods his competitors were allowed to use to achieve their lofty status, celebrity, and monetary gain…A good case could be made for Barry simply playing by the rules the System allowed.

Read their entire analysis here.

Readers of Independent Sources know our opinion. Apply the Olympic doping standard and strip baseball of their prized antitrust exemptions if they don’t comply. If all else fails, RICO ‘em all.

tags: barry bonds Baseball steroids MLB

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 26th, 2006 at 7:59 pm by Insider and is filed under Big Thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.