Posted on 05/28/2006 6:01:06 PM PDT by Pokey78
Barry Bonds was in Milwaukee recently and the commissioner of baseball wouldn’t make the 10-minute drive from his house to watch him. So it follows that Bud Selig wasn’t in when Bonds moved past Babe Ruth on the home run list.
Nor were any of Ruth’s children. Nor any high-level officials. Nor anybody whose presence screamed, “I’m important, so I’m here.”
Barry Bonds hit his 715th home run Sunday. But every overblown ESPN news break-in couldn’t drown out the sad reality of the moment. It was as awkward as it was historical. Some wanted to watch. Most wanted to cover their eyes.
This wasn’t a player punctuating greatness. This was the most vilified sports star we’ve ever seen affirming his place among the five darkest moments in baseball history.
Count them. Like plagues:
1. Eight members of the Chicago White Sox are banned for conspiring to throw the 1919 World Series.
2. Pete Rose, the game’s greatest hitter, agrees to a lifetime ban for betting — on baseball.
3. Baseball cancels the 1994 World Series, not because of natural disaster but rather mutant labor negotiators.
4. Congress holds steroid hearings. Among the Murderers Row giving testimony: Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro and Jose Canseco — who ironically turns out to be baseball’s shining light.
5. Bonds passes the great Ruth and closes in on the great Hank Aaron. But he’s the poster child of the steroid era, and his baggage and personality have led him to become the sport’s greatest pox instead of ambassador.
This is a sport that embraces its heroes and statistical achievements. Numbers are dipped in gold. 56. 61. .400. 714. 755.
Now here comes a man who puts up incredible numbers and few outside of San Francisco want to celebrate. Selig said weeks ago he wouldn’t show up for 715. Hold the pomp, shelve the circumstance. Selig would close his eyes and pretend it didn’t happen. There’s an old country-western tune that applies here: “If the phone don’t ring, you know it’s me.”
The NFL had a vested interest in helping reshape Ray Lewis’ image after his Atlanta murder trial. The NBA needed Kobe Bryant to be a smiling pitchman again after rape charges were dropped.
Baseball isn’t moving to resuscitate Bonds. His image couldn’t be saved by “House.” He is impossible to like. A fan catches a home run ball. Bonds refuses a request to sign the ball but asks the fan to sign a release so he could use his likeness on his TV show. This is the sport’s ambassador?
Frogs, locusts, diseased cattle.
Gambling, strikes, steroids.
It’s all relative.
Embarrassment: The “Black” Sox scandal is still debated 87 years later. It has kept “Shoeless” Joe Jackson out of the Hall of Fame. Rose was never accused of throwing a game. He just gutted its integrity by betting and lying about it. The all-time hits leader was thrown out and isn’t in the Hall.
Embarrassment: Fans have learned to hate two words: collective bargaining. But nothing in the long, inglorious history of labor woes equals the cancellation of the 1994 World Series. Owners and players couldn’t figure out how to divide millions.
Embarrassment: Steroids have tainted this entire era of players. Bonds just happens to be the leader in the pharmacy. For baseball to strip him or any player of their statistics is nonsensical. What of the steroid-using pitchers Bonds homered off of? Do two druggies cancel each other out? How to determine which homers were drug-aided and which weren’t? It’s a futile exercise. But we know what steroids have done to the record book. Not players. Steroids.
Bonds says he doesn’t care what people say or think. If that were true, he wouldn’t be trying to reshape his image on TV. ESPN was only too happy to sell itself out, giving Bonds a time slot and a blank script for a weekly 30-minute soliloquy called, “Bonds on Bonds.”
My wife and I watched the other night. There was tape of Philadelphia fans booing Bonds as he stepped to the plate.
“Why are they booing him?” my wife asked. “There’s steroids in hot dogs and Babe Ruth ate those.”
My wife. Funny girl.
Bonds juiced because he was jealous. Relying on interviews, documents and grand jury testimony in the book, “Game of Shadows,” authors alleged that Bonds decided to turn to muscle drugs after witnessing the attention paid to the McGwire-Sosa home run chase in 1998.
Follow the growth. Bonds averaged 31.8 home runs from 1986 to 1999. He averaged 51.6 from 2000 to 2004, including 73 in 2001. He hit one home run every 16 at-bats in his first 14 seasons. He hit one every eight at-bats in his next five.
I know. Good hot dogs.
History views Ruth as a home run hitter. Bonds will be viewed as something far less. A lab creation.
Bonds would have been shamed out of the game in a more respectable time.
715 was big news in 1974. Baseball has moved on.
Was just watching Sunday Night Baseball and the reporter couldn't say enough times that, in San Francisco, Bonds receives "unconditional love" from the fans. I think they deserve each other.
Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron: still no's. 1 and 2 on the all time HR list.
I'd say he's not going to reach it.
Athritis is degenrative. ie, he won't heal.
I'm not of of those "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" guys. But I despise Bonds even though the cretin media does too.
Ditto.
He will pass Aaron as well. How Hammering Hank will react will be very interesting when that day comes to pass.
Without the juice, Bonds would have had a nice carreer--about 450 homers, good hits, walks, rbi numbers. Hall of fame consideration-maybe-down the line-maybe.
As it is now, he's just a bum. (As are McGuire ans Sosa)
Yeah, his physical condition is going to make it tough. ....especailly in the NL where he's barely able to field his position nowadays. Wouldn't surprise me if he finished up as a DH in the AL.
When the schedule changed, baseball went from National Pastime to professional sport.
Bonds was the greatest player of his generation before he juiced, and the greatest of his generation after he juiced. He is a sign of the times in baseball.
On the other hand, you would think he had killed someone given the hysteria over his passing Ruth. Bonds was the greatest player during the steroid era, just as Ruth was the greatest player during the segregated era. Ruth dominated his sport more dramatically than any other pro athlete ever, something that comparing the numbers of others in other generations will never take away. Ruth was far more dominant than Aaron by a long shot, but Aaron is the all time home run king.
History will place it all in perspective, including the fact that Jose Canseco (a joke in his own right) was correct: at least half of major league players were taking some form of steroid for years. In that era, Bonds towered over all in terms of performance, and was probably the most feared hitter ever (hence, the number of intentional walks).
Bonds was a lock Hall of Famer before he ever juiced.
What's baseball ? Wasn't that a sport they used to play in the 20th Century ?
He treated us fans and Pittsburgh reporters like crap and deserves the same!!!!!!!
Exactly.
I doubt it.
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