Posted on 08/08/2007 8:12:46 AM PDT by hardback
This is why he did it. This is, ironically, what he wanted: all eyes on him, urgent cut-ins, the undivided attention of the world. He saw all the love and adoration that was heaped upon Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa nine years ago, and he reacted in typical Barry Bonds fashion.
Like a petty, selfish, spoiled child.
In the end, there is no mystery to this crime story. We know what Bonds did - he admitted it to a grand jury, after placing his hand on the Bible - and we know why he did it. For the most juvenile, sophomoric and stupid of reasons: He was jealous. He had everything, he wanted more.
Bonds was the best all-around player in baseball back then, a certain first-ballot Hall of Famer who already had won six Gold Gloves and three MVPs. And who were they? McGwire and Sosa were good players, sure, but they were never in his class. They cheated their way onto the big stage, so he responded in typical Barry Bonds fashion, like a man without the slightest hint of conscience. He cheated, too.
And he cheated better. He wasn’t going to take a backseat to the white boy, as he called McGwire, according to girlfriend Kimberly Bell.
So he smashed McGwire’s ill-gotten record for homers in a season, and then he set his sights on the most hallowed milestone in sports. Last night in San Francisco he stole that record from the great Hank Aaron with a solo shot off Washington’s Mike Bacsik. In San Francisco, thousands of soulless toadies took great delight in Bonds’ tainted achievement, but beyond the bay, the moment was met with almost universal disgust. Perhaps the only legitimate record set last night was: most eyewitnesses to a crime in human history.
On one level, it is, of course, a sad day in sports. An asterisk is now seared into the baseball record book like a permanent needle mark. Fathers will forever be telling sons about the infamous Steroid Era, a time when the games were not played on the level and the numbers were as phony as a Clinton family photo op. That is too bad.
But you know what would have been much, much worse? Another 1998. Another scam, another sham, another celebration like the one that erupted around McGwire and Sosa, two frauds who mainlined their way into the hearts of American baseball fans. They saved baseball, remember? Sure they did. They saved baseball like Ben Johnson saved the 100 meters, like Rosie Ruiz saved the Boston Marathon.
We’ve probably all been scammed once in our lives. If you were a baseball fan, you got scammed in the summer of ’98, taken for a ride by Sosa and McGwire. Remember it? No one booed back then, but oh, how we wish we had. Oh, how we would like to go back in time and point a finger at these two juiced-up frauds and tell them they weren’t going to get away with it.
Hey, McGwire, you hit .201 before you discovered the joys of performance enhancers. You hit 22 homers in 483 at-bats in 1991. You’re about as much of an all-time great as Dave Kingman was.
And you, Sosa, we caught you corking bats. We know you have no qualms, no conscience about cheating the game. You expect us to believe you just kind of filled in?
Liars, cheaters, frauds, phonies. Together they spit on Maris and Mantle and Mays, and all the other 180-pound stars who did it for real. They chose the shortcut, better hitting through chemistry, and thought they were going to get away with it. They had the union zealots behind them, they had a linguini-spined commissioner and they had the starry-eyed sycophants from ESPN who wanted to believe that flaxseed could make a man’s head grow a size and a half. Oh, but along came tenacious federal agent Jeff Novitzky, the BALCO grand jury and“Game of Shadows,” the brilliant expose that split sports fans into two camps: You either flat-out know that Bonds is a lying, cheating, chemically enhanced creep, or you didn’t read the book.
It’s all there in this devastating, 300-page disinfectant. You digest the facts laid out by Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada, and you understand that what we saw last night would not have happened if Bonds hadn’t broken federal laws and, thus, violated the rules of Major League Baseball.
It is too bad he got this far, but in the end, there is great consolation in the reaction of the public. He might have gotten to 756, but does it feel like he got away with it? There is no one left who genuinely, honestly believes in his heart that Bonds did not cheat. There is no one who believes Bonds would have been rounding the bases last night, two weeks after his 43rd birthday, if he hadn’t taken a detour through the BALCO labs.
We got fooled once, in ’98, and the joke was on us. We got fooled twice, last night in San Francisco, and the joke was on Bonds. He stole Aaron’s record, but he did not get away with it. Hundreds of millions of people watched this historic moment, all of them eyewitnesses to a crime.
What a great player Thurman Munson was and what a loss to the game when he died. He was one tough guy.
If you went down the Giants lineup over the past six years...from coaches to players...I doubt you can find more than six guys who actually support and approve of Barry. Most are just a bit negative, on up to extremely negative. He never was a team player. Barry played on a Giants team that was totally lacking of any real drive or character...which you can blame on the owners or the management...but Barry sure helped to make it that way.
Bonds is a great talent, but the tradition of baseball has been to let the pitcher have a share of the plate.
My nomination for the dumbest post on FR today.
Given what we've seen with the Haditha, Hamidinia, and Duke LaCrosse cases, the reality is that he is just as likely to be jailed if he refused to give the account the prosecution dictated to him. Don't pretend the justice system is only as corrupt as proffesional sports.
Geez, in the 2nd pic, look at the size of the Goose, in comparison to Munson.
I got a chance to listen to the Goose pitch...it was back in '81. I say "listen" because, even though I was sitting behind home, I couldn't follow the ball. It just roared when it came over the plate. And every pitch sounded like a pistol shot when it hit the catcher's glove.
I think that things are different now. Not better, by any means....just different. I think that a good start to improving baseball would be to get rid of 1/2 dozen teams (or more)...the talent pool has just been too diluted. When journeyman infielders that hit .225 are *averaging* a million bucks a year, there's something wrong with the system.
If you can provide evidence otherwise, please do so.
Reflect on this idea again.
Liberals have taken over the education system. More like occupied the field vacated by Conservatives.
Sour grapes, huh? Go to Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada and call them liars. Prove them to be liars.
Or just sit down and shut up.
one thing I noticed after the home run last night—it seemed to me that the Giants players were a bit reserved when congratulating Bonds. Several had looks of indifference on their faces.
I can hear him now: "Gee, even though I can testify truthfully without implicating anybody, I'm afraid there's a chance an overzealous prosecutor will throw me in jail because I'm not telling him what he wants to hear so I'll just refuse to testify and go to jail for sure instead."
Good one. Thanks for the laugh.
You’ve already made a fool out of yourself by insinuating you know more than I do (simply because we disagree) about this, plus you can’t back up what you said, and now you have the nerve to call my post dumb?
Go back to class, kid.
Exactly. How many pitchers were or are taking steroids and no one says a word? Bonds is also remarkable because his success over the last five years would demand that he was drug-free (given potential testing by MLB and the ongoing Grand Jury etc.)Yet he broke three or four other records during that time and had to deal with the spotlight and not too friendly media 24/7. A true hero!
Nice one Doug.
“In San Francisco, thousands of soulless toadies ...”
OH LAWL, what a drama queen. XD
Or to put it another way, one shouldn't be convicted simply because he's not well loved, nor should one feel they are entitled to respect simply because their legal guilt wasn't (or hasn't yet) proven beyond the shadow of a doubt. See "Simpson, O.J." for more information.
Babe Ruth would have hit more than 1,600 HRs had he played as long as did Aaron. And in Atlanta, they kept moving the fences in to help him get the record. That is cheating in itself.
No way. A-Rod just doesn't have the scary, Hollywood villain look that McGuire and Bonds had/have. The swollen muscles and head, the scary intensity. A-Rod is not juiced.
Babe Ruth is still the homerun champion of all time. The dude was a man among boys. He played 7 of the 9 positions on the ball diamond and still hit that many homeruns. Aaron did not do it in the same span of time that Ruth did it, therefore, in my opinion, Aaron did not break the record.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.