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.
LOL
sure it isn't.
Keep dreaming though Noob.
if it's the cover that I think it is (Camaniti is sitting against a motorcycle), I still have it.
Look dude, I don't have anything against football. In fact it's my favorite sport.
But an objective, historical view of both sports recognizes the greater significance baseball has had on the culture of this country.
Baseball is in it's third century in this country, and the history you cite begins in the 1970's.
Barry Bonds "HALL OF FAMER/CHEATER".
What is just as sad as a supreme talent like Bonds juicing, is that there are so damn many people that just don't see much wrong with the fact that he did CHEAT, only that, he was one of the BEST ANYWAY, so it really doesn't matter, or that the results of his cheating were BETTER than everyone else who CHEATED.
I can go out into my garage and 'gin up a potato gun that will shoot a baseball a quarter mile. Watching baseballs fly is no great thrill. What is thrilling is watching a man hit a baseball and put it into the cheap seats.
But with Bonds, you are not watching a man. You are watching a freak of chemistry. You are watching a thing that owes more to his pharmacist than to his batting coach. It is of no great interest interest to watch such a thing hit baseballs out of the park. I could do better with my potato gun.
Lots of good info but was any of it cheating? That is the allegation.
for the NFL :)
Wouldn't THAT be something?
well said
Your proof?
Yeah.
All this anti-Bonds.
Where was the outrage against Sosa and McGwire?
What he did wasn't illegal at the time.
And unlike Ruth and Aaron, he faced pitchers that where HYPED on steroids.
If either Ruth or Aaron had had to face pitchers on steroids, that we wouldn't have hit 600.
Pitching evolves, hitting evolves.
Get over it.
Bonds is the second all-time home run hitter in the history of Major League Baseball.
LOL
Look, ARod is a talented player, but he DOES disappear in clutch situations.
Sorry, that's the perception and it's generally the rule with him.
The clutch guy on the Yankees was and is Derek Jeter.
Play6offs.... greatness happens in playoffs. Remember Mr. October? Barry was Mr. Invisible in October for Pittsburgh.
Playoffs.... greatness happens in playoffs. Remember Mr. October? Barry was Mr. Invisible in October for Pittsburgh.
Where is your proof that Bonds did anything wrong? The operative word being proof.
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