Met fans booing Bonds are hypocrites?

Mike Vaccaro of the NY Posts writes that if Met fans boo Barry Bonds this week while the Giants are visiting New York but do not offer the same greeting to Guillermo Mota, who is returning from a 50 game ban for testing positive for steroids, then all Met fans will be hypocrites of the worst kind.

Mets fans will boo Bonds, all right, and that is their right. But those boos had better be rooted in the malice of jeering fearsome opponents, not just one currently embroiled in a scandal. Because this week, the Mets will welcome back a relief pitcher named Guillermo Mota who is sure to strengthen an already-rugged bullpen, a pitcher who showed flashes of electricity last autumn, a pitcher in whom Willie Randolph hopes to be able to entrust plenty of seventh and eighth innings across the next four months.

A pitcher who today will complete a 50-game ban imposed by baseball because he did something that Barry Bonds has never yet done: He flunked a steroid test. He peed in a cup and that cup practically turned fluorescent from all the chemicals swimming around in it. He cheated. Say it again. Mota cheated. He is not a suspected cheater. He is an adjudged cheater.

Now, if Mota comes back to the Mets and he’s missing a yard or two off his fastball, Shea Stadium is going to greet him the same way they did last October, when he surrendered the Game 2 Scott Spiezio blast that turned the NLCS with the Cardinals completely around: they will boo him off the mound, and they’ll do it on merit.

But if it turns out the illicit juice he injected in himself wasn’t a magic potion, if it turns out that he really is the pitcher he was with the Dodgers a few years ago, or the one who thrilled the Mets in small swatches last year, then never will be heard a discouraging word. And the skies won’t be cloudy all day.

Again, there are no rules banning hypocrisy on the back of your game ticket, alongside the rain-check policy. You can do what you want. Just think about all of that when you stand up to boo Bonds. Boo him because he can kill your team. Boo him because you don’t think him a worthy heir to Hank Aaron. Boo him because you just don’t like him. All of that is fair.

But if you boo him because you think he’s a steroid freak . . . well, think of it as a new spin on the old Latin maxim “caveat emptor.”

Booer beware.

I think not.

While not condoning the use of steroids, cheering Mota's return is not at all hypocritical since Mota was caught, admitted using steroids and served his penalty. He didn't offer up ridicules explanations as Bonds has done he just knew he was caught red-handed and admitted it. Bonds has steadfastly denied knowingly using steroids and, as he and the ESPN loving media have repeatedly pointed out, he has never tested positive for any banned substance.

So why not cheer someone who made a mistake, payed his dues and has come back to face the music?

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