If the authors of Game of Shadows are correct (full disclosure: I have read the well-publicized excerpt; my copy of the book is yet to arrive at this writing), and Barry Bonds has no more deniability regarding steroid use, what does it really wreak upon Bonds' legacy and, concurrently, that of a baseball government which enabled him to use whatever it was that he used since the end of the 1998 season?
Will Carroll, whose book The Juice: The Real Story of Baseball's Drug Problems should be required reading for anyone deigning to comment on the steroid issue, has offered one answer.
"Ben Johnson, the Canadian Olympic sprinter stripped of his gold medal after testing positive for the anabolic steroid Stanozolol at the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, did not become a world-class record-holding sprinter merely because he used anabolic steroids," Mr. Carroll writes.
"Rather, steroids allowed him to do the type of workout that developed his upper- and lower-body muscles to propel him down the track at an extremely rapid rate of speed. He still had to have the proper genetics, still had to work constantly on starts and running form, and still had to tirelessly practice his skills."
We can condemn Bonds with little fear of contradiction for being a first-class ass, but we cannot condemn him as a cheater, really, because we don't know for dead last certain whether he would not have rolled "the greatest five consecutive seasons of any hitter in baseball history" but for the sundry substances with which he amplified his training and, hence, his musculature. We don't know for dead last certain whether Thomas Boswell, the eminence of the Washington Post, was right in concluding that Bonds otherwise could not have "approached, much less broken, any of the all-time marks for which he lusted so much that he has now ruined his name."
This we know: If Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams (the authors of Game of Shadows) are right, and Bonds started playing with steroids because he seethed over Mark McGwire turning Roger Maris aside, then Bonds is as guilty as anyone of springing forth from a false or an unproven pretense. Fainaru-Wada and Williams describe a Bonds convinced that McGwire was a 'roid oid, never mind that McGwire's substance, androstendione, was a) a lawful supplement and b) is not a steroid.
This, too, we know: describing as Fainaru-Wada, Williams, and others have done about steroids' ability to mask fatigue and pain and resuscitate stamina, there is a serious question in terms of asking precisely what the hell is wrong with relieving fatigue and pain and resuscitating stamina. Generations of ballplayers before Bonds were said to use one or another form of amphetamines (now, too, barred from baseball) for much the same reasons. But it is difficult to reconcile the actual or alleged artificial "enhancement" to the point that the substance(s) customarily will not jump a hitter from good to great to off the charts in a sustained swoop.
And if the issue is the impossibility of a man in his mid-30s performing at levels "impossible" for his age, it should be borne in mind that Hank Aaron from age 33 through age 40 — the age at which he passed Babe Ruth's career home run mark — hit 271 home runs, averaging out to 39 a season. He hit 44 home runs at age 35, 47 at age 37, and 40 at age 39. Ruth at 33 hit 54; he hit 46 at 34, 49 at 35, 46 at 36, and 41 at 37. It is impossible to say whether Barry Bonds would not have performed at a 39-a-season average from 33 to 40. Eliminate his 73-bomb 2001 and health problems and Bonds might yet be within sight of Aaron, anyway.
He has, of course, rendered the question's impossibility by way of his behavior and the void in which the actualities of steroid use for baseball players' performances reside. That he might have launched into steroid use from jealousy and a false perception renders him a fool. At least, a bigger fool than he was already.
"Bonds's sour personality and petty peevishness toward the demands on his time by the fans and press — surely a small price to pay for the wealth and adoration they have heaped on him — have smothered the public's interest in Bonds and his place in baseball history," Allen Barra observed, in Brushbacks and Knockdowns. "He is the great wet blanket of Major League Baseball."
Bonds may prove fortunate that he isn't even close to being the only or the biggest jerk who ever approached a record otherwise held in awe, never mind being the best in his business for time enough. He may pass Hank Aaron as a home run hitter and a ballplayer, but Hank Aaron is light years past him as a man.
April 3, 2006
Authentic Signed Sports:
I feel there is too much focus being put on Barry Bonds. If he was not approaching Ruth’s record I doubt there would even be an investigation. He may not be a well liked individual, but there is no denying that he is a GREAT Baseball Player. Whatever performance enhancing drug that he may have used (if it is ever proved). It did not help him see the ball better or to make contact. Instead of hitting a ball 400 ft. It may have helped him hit it 420 ft. Either way he deserves his place in baseball History among the greats that have played this beloved game. Leave Barry alone & let’s PLAY BALL!