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.
Baseball markED the time, it doesn't anymore. Baseball is the National Pasttime, but football is now the National Sport. Superbowl Sunday is a national holiday, the single most watched event in the world. MNF regularly gets better ratings than the World Series (except when they go head to head oddly enough) and ABC considered those ratings poor enough to get rid of the show.
It's the TV really that changed it all. Baseball has never really been a good TV sport, too much unregulated dead air in the game. Football is the ultimate TV sport, naturally born for instant replays and with well regulated gaps in the play making it easy to broadcast, in fact some say football is best watched on TV, IMHO all sports are better in person but I can see why people might like football on TV more.
Well said. But, I disagree slightly. Without the juice, Bonds would have walked right into the Hall of Fame. He's an all-time great player, even au natural.
But, he'll always be remembered for juicing up the record books and tarnishing the game.
They have been for a while.
Definitely longer than what Bonds has been juicing for.
Willy Mays is the best defensive outfielder ever. He ii also the best all round ballplayer ever. Not to change the subject, but just when was it that MLB banned steroids? I would also like one of the many Bonds bashers on this thread to explain exactly when he has ever tested positive.
umm one thing Bonds did that the others didn't do, was participating in an ILLEGAL activity that directly involved his play on the field.
Steroids themselves are not illegal, but the use of them is restricted and as far as I know, the use of them is banned in baseball.
The Hall of Fame isn't the goal of the players willing to sacrifice everything for gaudy stats. The sheer fame is the goal, and the sponsorship deals, and the fat contracts, and the loose women. You could blow up all the Halls today and the players like Bonds wouldn't even know, I doubt he even knows where it is, unless there's a big check waiting for him there.
The problem with baseball is that until recently they did no testing at all. I'm sure that Bonds is off the juice now, it's very evident in his hitting this season.
I read he's already lost a step.
I put Barry Bonds in the same place I put that guy I knew in the military who always cheated at Solitare, and therefore always won.
yes that is a problem to be sure.
Lack of juice and just plain gettin old are catching up to him. I don't think he's thinking that far out, he expects to get away with it, and he probably will too.
yeah so now he's only 4 steps above every other Centerfielder not named Mike Cameron :)
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