Bonds: The Symptom and Cause

"Here's the guy who has Barry's back."

I was walking through the newsroom when one of my favorite water cooler sports buddies attempted to out me as a Barry Bonds sympathizer. It was less than 48 hours after Bonds sent home run No. 756 into the right-field stands, which in turn sent sports media and fans scurrying to play another exciting edition of everyone's favorite game: "What does it all mean?"

As I said to Office Sports Buddy, I think Bonds is — with or without the juice — the greatest left fielder in baseball history, and had earned consideration for immortality before his performance enhancement, if not a plaque in Cooperstown itself. I also think he's a loathsome individual fueled by a surly arrogance who spoiled his charmed baseball life by searching out a chemical cure for his inferiority complex. That all of these traits can inhabit the same human form is extraordinary, and perhaps an even more understandable diagnosis than steroids as for why Bonds' head is the size of Maui.

I think claiming I've had "Barry's back" during the last several scandalous years is a little exaggerated, but understandable. It's not so much that I've defended the man; more that I've taken a realistic stance on the entire issue of steroids in baseball and their effect on the record book.

For example, I've been a staunch opponent of the asterisk on controversial records; the "*" was No. 12 in my book "Glow Pucks & 10-Cent Beer: The 101 Worst Ideas in Sports History." I think it's nonsense that an asterisk should be used when dealing with records tainted by performance-enhancing drugs but not with, say, ones set using artificial turf, which has had a much more significant impact on offensive stats (outside of the home run) than any little pill. Every record-setting era in baseball is so alien to the others that the record book would look like a blizzard by the time all the properly considered asterisks were placed. That's why these puerile purists who think Bonds' record deserves an asterisk are, to put it in terms they can understand, a bunch of d*ckhe*ds.

After Bonds broke the record, I looked back at what I had written about his exploits, the Congressional steroid testimony, and baseball's performance-enhancing drug scandals over the last several years. My first manifesto on the issues was published in SportsFan Magazine back in fall 2001: a column titled "Let Them Juice." My feelings today echo my thoughts six years ago:

Chemical enhancing by pro athletes is no different from advancements in weight training or equipment. Steroids, andro — they're all just part of a large assortment of factors that create an atmosphere in which today's inferior players can be mentioned in the same breath as the legends of the game. Hitters' ballparks, watered-down pitching, steroids — they have all irrevocably changed the game.

So let them juice.

Let every player on every team go 30-30 every season. Fans are still going to treat Aaron's 755 home runs and 2,297 RBI and Cobb's .367 batting average as all-time records of biblical proportions — and no amount of pills will challenge a 56-game hitting streak.

In other words, Aaron's record still stands in the hearts and minds of fans; not only because the man who broke it needed what is now a banned substance to surpass Aaron, but because Aaron achieved that mark in an era without digital slow-motion video used by hitting instructors or arthroscopic surgery or pitching that's diluted to the point of embarrassment or a stadium in Denver. Steroids are part of a seismic shift in baseball that created a nearly unprecedented era of offensive output; Bonds is just that era's most prominent beneficiary.

Should he be crucified for juicing? Yes, as should anyone else with the damning evidence and guilt by association Bonds carries with him. (I've often felt those who give Bonds some benefit of the doubt because he's never formally tested positive were also waiting for a bloody Ginzu to fall out of O.J.'s pant leg during the trial.) What I'm not willing to do is acknowledge him as the fall guy for the players association's disgusting cronyism and big media's hypocritical approach to the steroid issue. If (if ... who are we kidding?) Bonds cheated, he did so because scores of his peers and his watchmen were content to count the money generated by this culture of corruption than fight for the alleged "integrity" of their game.

I think I said everything I'll ever need to say about that "integrity" in a JQ from back in March 2005:

I don't see the steroid debate as a microcosm of the ongoing debates over societal evils and moral indignation. I see it as a bunch of people who hold baseball to some sort of pious standard treating "the integrity of the game" as if it actually still means something.

Baseball lost its way years before Barry Bonds began his formal assault on Hank Aaron's record. He's a symptom of that degradation of character, but far from its cause.

Greg Wyshynski is the Features Editor for SportsFan Magazine in Washington, DC, and the Senior Sports Editor for The Connection Newspapers of Northern Virginia. His book is "Glow Pucks and 10-Cent Beer: The 101 Worst Ideas in Sports History." His columns appear every Saturday on Sports Central. You can e-mail Greg at [email protected].