Barry Bonds Arm Apparatus

FriarForum.com reader Travis recently commented on our post about Bud Selig's reaction to Barry Bonds tying Hank Arron's record. In his comment, Travis provides a link to an editorial alleging that Bonds' elbow armor not only unfairly gives him access to outside pitches without fear of injury, but also improves his mechanics. We haven't studied that massive elbow armor in detail, but the article does bring up another interesting angle that has been bantered about between myself and my father. Inexplicably, my father has become a Barry Bonds defender (in my estimation, his argument is that if Tony Gwynn says Bonds is okay, he's okay - but he can log on and attempt to explain himself). A popular theory aimed at protecting Bonds from asterisk status in the record books is that steroids weren't technically banned (and were actually passively encouraged) in baseball while Bonds (and others) were allegedly using them. This conversation turned into a debate about what's worse - performance enhancing drugs or outright cheating. I firmly believe that performance enhancing drugs are worse than cheating. For instance, throwing a spit ball seems much less of an transgression than sucking down Human Growth Hormone. What do you think? And how about that arm brace?