It's 756 HR's, One Steal: Bonds Forever Tarnishes Record

Boston Herald ^ | Wednesday, August 8, 2007 | Gerry Callahan

[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.

[Houmatt]

you trolling?

[KevinB]

If MLB and/or the justice system had been more efficient, this whole issue of Bonds/steroids would have & should have been addressed & “put to bed” before last night!

Perhaps it would have if the guy supplying him with the stuff hadn't refused to testify against Bonds. When a witness chooses jail over testifying it says a lot about what his testimony would be.

[eastsider]

Move over for the 'Shambino'

LOL! Classic.

[yooling]

Barry Bonds:

All star: 1990, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2007

NL MVP: 1990, 1992, 1993, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004

Gold Gloves: 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1998

Lifetime on-base %444.6

Lifetime Slugging %607.6

Career Hits: 2915

Career Walks: 2540/(679 intentional)

Career Stolen Bases: 514

Extra Base Hits: 1432

Career Home Runs:

756

All of this is due to a few years of steroid use?

I think NOT!

[safeasthebanks]

So I ask you the same question, why the freak are/were he and the other clowns using them (steroids)?!?!?!

[1L]

>>juice added 50 feet to his drives changing them from flyball outs to 400 foot homeruns<<

I guess you have something to back this up with?

[Houmatt]

Despite what one thinks about Bonds alleged steroid use there is one inescapable fact. He hit 756 home runs.

Here is another inescapable fact: Aaron hit 755 home runs on his own accord. Bonds did not.

[discostu]

As one sports writer pointed out “show me another pitcher whose fastball got faster when they turned 40”. Some folks say there were a lot more pitchers juicing than sluggers. We’ll never know for sure, and it doesn’t really matter. The game did what the game did. The chose not to make steroids against the rules, so people really shouldn’t be calling these guys cheaters. And attendance and revenue came up during the steroid era and has stayed up, so apparently the gambit worked, most of the fans don’t care.

[Jokelahoma]

A court of law and the court of public opinion are two entirely different things. One does not need a conviction in one to have earned a complete conviction on all counts in another. And Bonds has earned every bit of what he's getting from the public outside of the few Giants fans who are willing to look past anything, so long as the perpetrator wears orange and black.

[Texas Federalist]

If he took drugs to get stronger it means nothing if you cannot take a round bat and hit a round ball coming at you at 90 mph or faster.

Personally, for the amount they charge for tickets these days, I want to see a hormone-infused freak circus. If I want to see regular people, I'll go to a Longhorns game.

[1L]

I don’t know, but I can’t see how that is relevant to the issue of whether it helped him or not. I haven’t seen any real proof it has. All conjecture and supposition, mostly from people who don’t really understand what steroids do.

[pogo101]

[Mr. Jeeves]

Like a petty, selfish, spoiled child.

"Hey, everybody! I'm a real sportswriter and everything! I can even use nasty language, just like my hero, Keith Olbermann!!!" ;)

[NCBraveheart]

What is most impressive is that Babe Ruth hit 715 in fewer games per season on a steady diet of beer,booze hot dogs, cigars and women! Now that’s impressive!

[1L]

>>I want to see a hormone-infused freak circus. If I want to see regular people, I’ll go to a Longhorns game.<<

You’re right. At Sips games, all it is is just a freak circus — especially in the stands.

[yooling]

Roger Clemens

[Natural Law]

"Go A-Rod."

Amen to that. I am definitely not a Yankees fan, although some of my heroes have been Yankees. I do respect players who achieve records in the course of trying to win games and pennants, Alex Rodriguez is such a player. Bonds AND the SF Giants put winning games and pennant pursuits second to achieving this record for the pure circus of it. Both are tainted by it, as is MLB and the parasite sports media for tolerating this fiasco.

[misterrob]

Roger has gotten a lot bigger over his later years so he’s been a bit suspect. His career was in trouble around 1995-1996 and guess who he played with back at that time? Jose Canseco. They got to be rather friendly. Roger left Boston and went to Toronto in 1997 and was joined again with Jose for 1998. It was after he left Boston that his career took off again. Developing a splitter certainly made him an elite pitcher again and no one can say that Roger didn’t put the time in at the gym.

Still.....

[safeasthebanks]

Don’t see how it is relevant?!?!? Well I’m clearly not getting a good faith argument here, so..........

[BigBobber]

He hit 756 home runs. I can’t hit an outside fastball thrown by a batting machine let alone Randy Johnson. Bonds can and did. No amount of juice can give you the hand eye coordination to do that.

OK, but we are not comparing Barry with you, we are comparing him with other big league hitters. Guys like Hank Arron who have the hand-eye coordination to make contact with the ball.

If Barry was so great, why did he take the juice? Because each year those drugs turned 20 to 30 long flyball outs into home runs .

The other thing we are missing in Barry's recent make over: he is not a fan's player. He's the rudest, most arrogant baseball star ever.

And he's no family man. He has had several kept women. Well documented in legal proceedings.

He also cheats on his taxes. Need I go on? He's no hero.