Barry Bonds, Steroids and Homers
Bonds is just three home runs away from the all-time record.
This isn’t anything that hasn’t been said by thousands of angry columnists all over the country hundreds of times over, but someone needs to do something about this Barry Bonds situation.
He is two home runs away from tying Hank Aaron’s holy record and three away from ruining everyone’s day – except, of course, the fans in San Francisco who seem to be blind to the cold reality of steroids.
Bonds angers everyone outside of the Bay Area. Opposing fans, players and managers detest him, and those who haven’t spoken up are surely blasting him behind closed doors. It seems that he has no friends in the baseball world, yet he continues to hit home runs in business-like fashion, seemingly carefree.
Makes you mad, doesn’t it? Even the home run king himself, the man who had to overcome death threats to his family to break Babe Ruth’s home run record in 1973, an African-American in the vein of Jackie Robinson and a role model to a generation of young black baseball players, won’t be attending Bonds’ record-breaking game.
Bud Selig has also signed off and won’t be attending the clouded and tainted day. The commish is currently trying another avenues to end Bonds’ chase of the perhaps the most sacred record in American sports, including asking Jason Giambi to help George Mitchell’s investigation, which might eventually lead to an inquiry towards Bonds to help Mitchell as well. If Bonds doesn’t cooperate, then Selig, as he did with Giambi, could threaten Bonds with a suspension before Aaron’s record goes down the drain.
Bonds is making his jacked up tour across the country now, giving fans a last glimpse of the wrong history before he returns to San Fran to conjure his worst. In Boston, Bonds hit his 748th bomb into the Red Sox dugout in right field – a hit that most thought would end up in the glove of J.D. Drew but snuck over the fence with a little help from a tailwind.
In the stands lied the real story: the fans’ reaction to Bonds playing on Fenway’s hallowed ground. Many held white pieces of paper with asterisks in the middle. Others held syringes and chanted ‘steroids’ and booed when Bonds approached the plate.
But as much as we all have it in for Barry, nothing – not ridicule nor hatred nor a nuclear blast – will rattle this guy. We all want something to happen, for Bonds to finally get what’s coming to him.
Mark McGwire was embarrassed and humiliated in front of the nation when Congress questioned him. McGwire was a beloved character, a nice man and great competitor who made a mistake that he regretted terribly.
Sammy Sosa, although now in the exclusive 600 club, hid behind the language barrier during his interrogation. Rafael Palmeiro failed a test and looked like somewhat of a meathead after he told Congress repeatedly that he never used steroids.
Other small fish have been caught with failed tests, but the big one has gotten away. Bonds doesn’t deserve the home run record, and everyone except Bonds and San Franciscans understands that.
And we all want Bonds to fade into obscurity like McGwire, to just go away and never be heard from again. Leave the record intact, depart without insulting the integrity of the fans or the sport and retire into the abyss.
But we know that’s too good to be true. The Cheater is only a few jacks away from the most prestigious sports record in American history. If he breaks it, prestigious is the last thing that it will be.
