The Two Sides of Barry Bonds

Victimhood means never having to say you're sorry.

After being dogged by steroid rumors most of the winter, Barry Bonds arrived Feb. 22 at the San Francisco Giants' spring training camp and faced the media.

To absolutely no one's surprise, Bonds offered no apologies in his interview, which was every bit as incomprehensible as last week's statement by the Yankees' Jason Giambi, but nowhere near as contrite.

With Bonds, there's never any shortage of people who done him wrong. At various times in his career, he has cast himself as being under attack by fans, management, the unfair tactics of opposing managers who refuse to pitch to him, even teammates, like Jeff Kent in San Francisco and Jeff King in Pittsburgh.

But Bonds can't simply be dismissed as a whiner. The truth is more nuanced than that, if only because he's not always wrong.

When Bonds said Babe Ruth got an undeserved free ride from the sports media, the Giants' star was on the mark.

Evidence for that is in the 1973 book No Cheering in the Press Box, a collection of interviews with sportswriters who worked in the 1920s and 1930s, billed itself as an inside look at "the golden age of sportswriting."

Instead, the book makes it clear that the era should have been called "the sycophantic, jock-sniffing age of sportswriting." It seemed as if half of the writers interviewed had stories about the times they were playing — and drinking — gin on a cross-country train trip with the Babe when a half-dozen prostitutes came strolling in.

The story invariably ended with a variant on the phrase, "And the Babe politely excused himself." By that standard, Bonds could have left a questionable substance in his locker, in plain view of the sports writers, secure in the knowledge that they would have kept his secret for him.

You know, like Mark McGwire.

It's a near-certainty that Bonds sees that double standard, not as a historical shift in the relationship between professional athletes and the sports media, but as a continuing example of personal hostility toward him.

Throughout his career, Bonds has seen the media as his archenemy, and he probably regarded his outbursts during that press conference as self-defense.

He even directed Jesus Christ's "He who is without sin cast the first stone," standard at reporters, although Bonds didn't use those exact words, according to the Associated Press.

"All of you guys have lied," Bonds said to a crowd of more than 100 reporters after being asked how the steroid controversy would affect his legacy. "Should you have an asterisk next to your name?"

Bonds, like a lot of professional athletes, is living under the misconception that he makes an obscene amount of money because he is good at what he does. In truth, Bonds' income is based on the fact that people are interested in what he does.

There are lots of people out there who are as good at what they do as, say Yankees' third baseman Alex Rodriguez, but don't earn $25 million a year.

Vaea Anitoni, for one. For those who don't know who he is — which would be, oh, all of you — Anitoni was the all-time leading try scorer in the history of United States international rugby. I'm not even certain if his annual income is $25,000 a year, much less $25 million.

And then there's Gary Gait, the Wayne Gretzky of lacrosse.

But Anitoni and Gait have excelled at sports that don't put butts into 50,000-seat stadiums or on couches in front of millions of television sets.

If the public wasn’t interested in what Bonds and Rodriguez do for a living, the media wouldn't report it. And it goes without saying that they wouldn't be cashing the fat paychecks, driving expensive cars, or living in huge homes.

Bonds is being a little disingenuous — not to mention a little hypocritical — by happily accepting the perks of fame while whining about the attention and scrutiny that goes with it.

Even though he didn't pull a Giambi and apologize for an unspoken breach of trust, Bonds began to defend his legacy in anticipation of the day when his denials would be even less plausible than they are now.

"I don't believe steroids help your hand-eye coordination," he said, according to the AP.

That's true, but they do help provide more power. Canseco, the self-proclaimed godfather of steroids, said the drug enabled him to use a heavier bat. Also, steroids and the muscle mass they help create allows the hitter to move that bigger bat with greater speed and power.

From there, we're just talking basic Einsteinian physics — energy equals mass times the acceleration squared. A heavier object, swung with more power, unleashes a greater amount of energy at the point of impact.

As a result, Bonds' fly ball out to left field becomes an opposite-field home run. That lazy line drive to right-center field turns into a frozen rope into the gap. Do that 30 times a season, or five times a month, and it's the difference between hitting 25 home runs with a .281 batting average, and 45 home runs at a .362 clip.

Of course, steroids never turned anyone, not even Canseco, into the kind of elemental force at the plate that Bonds has become. And maybe that's his legacy — to be the best player of his time.

We can call it the Monsanto era, named for an adaptation of its slogan the company used in its advertisements back in the 1970s:

"Better baseball through chemistry."