Outside Looking In

Back in the day…

You are arguably the best player in baseball, because that guy in Seattle didn’t steal bases and chose power over average.

Yes, you’re a pain in the ass with the media, but so was Teddy ballgame and he still got into Cooperstown. Besides, being mean to the press didn’t dent your popularity with fans, who didn’t mind that your ego was bigger than the planet Jupiter.

But then, some of the fans stopped their adulation of you and started paying attention to an injury-plagued first baseman and a journeyman outfielder who were hitting home runs at a record pace…

And you got jealous,

And angry,

And you decided that if home runs were what would bring the fans attention back to you, then that’s what you would do:

BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY

The lithe, lean body that you came out of Pittsburgh with, swelled into something seen only in comic books and pro wrestling.

And you gave the people home runs, LOTS AND LOTS of home runs.

You bypassed the two unworthy claimants to the seasonal home run throne,

Bypassed your Godfather,

Said so long to the Sultan of Swat,

And bypassed a man who showed more class in the face of something far worse than you ever dealt with, then and now,

To sit alone at the top.

Except during that chase and afterwards, people stopped looking you in the eye,

And after hitting .276 with 28 home runs in your last season, no team would touch you,

And as soon as you “retired” others started bending themselves into rhetorical knots to justify, excuse, and ameliorate what you had done:

“He wouldn’t be the only the only Hall of Famer that is suspected…”
(But no one else went out of their way to flaunt it like you did..)

“He was already a Hall of Famer…BEFORE”
(and Mark Fidrych was a Hall of Famer BEFORE his arm went kablooie)

“What about greenies (amphetamines)? They’re just as bad…”
(Greenies kept you alert after a night of carousing with Baseball Annies, but they didn’t add approximately 35 pounds of muscle on top of the skills God gave you)

“He never failed a test
(Of course they weren’t testing when you went from Bruce Banner to the Hulk..but I digress…)

And, of course, the favorite of every child everywhere:

“Everyone else was doing it…”
(So, I guess jumping off a bridge is all right as long as everyone else is doing it!!)

There’s a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth right now about how this is an injustice, but let’s also admit that if the Baseball Writers of America, the people responsible for keeping you on the outside looking in, came to you and said:

“Here’s the deal, we’ll let you in, but your plaque is going to say:

Barry Lamar Bonds
Pittsburgh Pirates 1986-1992,
San Francisco Giants 1993-2007
National League MVP a record 7 times,
Holds the MLB record for
Home Runs in a season (73)
Career Home Runs (762)
Is suspected of using performance enhancing drugs in the
later half of his career
Convicted of obstruction of justice after the federal investigation into steroids in baseball (though the conviction was overturned)

You would tell them no because, once again, your ego is the size of Jupiter.

You have a right to be proud, you did put in the sweat and work to do what is arguably the toughest thing to do is sports… “hit a round ball with a round bat squarely.”

And you want to know something, no one can take that from you ever—that will be the first sentence of your NY Times Obit: “Barry Bonds, one of the greatest players in the history of Major League Baseball.”  

But chances are the second sentence will be: “Who was denied entrance into the Baseball Hall of Fame because of his suspected use of performance enhancing drugs…”

Because at the end of the day there’s another word for excessive pride or self-confidence, which Barry Bonds has in abundance…

Hubris.

Add hubris to jealousy and you have the perfect toxic mix that ensures that Bonds has joined Jackson, Rose, and Clemens on the outside of Cooperstown, looking in.

And that is sad, because in the end, he didn’t need to do the things that lead to this sad day for baseball fans everywhere:

He chose to.

Until Next Time…