Hey you.
Yes, YOU.
The one reading this.
I have a little secret for you. You're supposed to hate Barry Bonds. Even more than any of the other accused steroid users that have been in the majors the past few years. More than Sammy Sosa, and even more than Mark McGwire. Bonds is supposed to be epicenter of your moralistic scorn. He has single-handedly ruined baseball, and right now he is pooping on the sacred baseball record books.
Well, at least that is the impression that you would get from watching and reading the media coverage on Barry Bonds the past few years. The media has decided that Barry is a villain, and editors everywhere are just letting unabashed potshots at Barry into stories every single day. A couple of examples. Rob Neyer today wrote this;
I won't bother much with Alex Rodriguez's injury, because apparently nobody's really going to know anything until he gets himself into an MRI machine. Obviously, if he's out for more than a few days, he's probably not going to break Roger Maris' record.
Over at CBSSportsline Scott Miller decided to jump on the bandwagon with this terribly original writing device:
No, the most fascinating development of all -- in either league -- was that San Francisco had to kick its marketing department into high-alert status and paper the house when it came to the resident Hometown Favorite*.
Between the penultimate release of the All-Star voting results and the final count on Sunday, Barry Bonds* made up 119,158 votes on Chicago Cubs outfielder Alfonso Soriano to earn a starting position in what very well could be the final All-Star Game for Bonds* and shove Soriano onto the NL bench.
Just imagine three more asterisks scattered throughout the column and you'll get the idea. The point is, it is both acceptable and downright trendy for the sports media to bash Barry Bonds at every single opportunity. Isn't the main stream media ostensibly supposed to be unbiased and neutral? Shouldn't a neutral media refer to Barry's efforts as a "chase" of the home run record rather than an "assault"? Evidently not, but this week saw something happen that has put a speed bump right in front of the Barry Bonds hate mobile being driven by the media.
The fans told them they were wrong.
Bonds made up a huge margin in the final days of All-Star balloting (119,158 votes behind to be exact) to be named a starter in the Mid-Summer Classic. It is almost comical to see how the media is dealing with this fact. Most are flat out ignoring the story, and the obvious statement that baseball fans don't hate Barry Bonds nearly as much as baseball writers do. Others are trying to explain it away as something else. Check this silly little spin from Miller's column:
Plus, the All-Star Game is being played on Bonds'* personal playground, in the one city in America that remains sympathetic to him.
And yet, until a late surge, he still almost wasn't voted into the game.
So where was all this hate and vitriol last week when Sammy Sosa hit his 600th home run? Why is Jason Giambi, who has actually admitted to using steroids, being painted almost as a sympathetic figure as he heads into his meeting with George Mitchell? The answer is simple. Jason Giambi is a likable human being. Sammy Sosa is a fun loving guy that has always been very cooperative with the media and joked around with them. Barry on the other hand is a recluse. He has never been buddies with the media, and in turn they have turned on him now in viper-like fashion. It really isn't anymore complicated than that. This is middle school style payback. "You stole my brownie, I'm gonna spit on your lunch box".
And yet...
Somehow Barry was still able to be voted into the All-Star game by the fans. How could this be? I mean, isn't he hiking a leg all over the sanctity of the game? Yeah, him, Pete Rose, and Shoeless Joe all are. Those dirty scoundrels. They are the BAD GUYS that the Hall of Fame voters (read: baseball writers) have decided to martyr for the rest of eternity for their variety of sins. Forget that unabashed racists like Ty Cobb and Cap Anson are in the Hall. Or that notorious ball doctoring (read: cheating) pitchers Whitey Ford and Gaylord Perry are in there as well. Bonds and company just are plain old meanies. Booooo!!! I'm gonna spit on their lunch boxes.
Yet somehow baseball fans see beyond all of the media bias. Why? Simply put, baseball fans are a lot smarter than they are given credit for by the media. Perhaps they voted Barry in because, well, he deserved it. And perhaps they recognize that coming out of the Steroid Era in baseball it is utterly foolish to cherry pick a player here and there and label them as the bad guys in this mess, even if it would make them feel better about themselves and satisfy some deep-seated moral fairness complex. Maybe fans just plain get it, that there is no fixing the past and that dumping on a few players isn't going to make the stink of the steroid era go away. That the only way to go forward is to appreciate what is left, because once you start putting asterisks on one record in all fairness you would likely have to strip the majority of records set in the past two decades. As for evidence? Well, there is a lot of circumstantial stuff, a lot of dodged questions, and a lot of freakish photo comparisons. Nothing has been proven though, and as dramatic a change as Bonds and Sosa's bodies have undergone during their careers a similar look at Roger Clemens' physique would be likewise damning if guilt is what you are looking for. (I'm not accusing Clemens, just making a point) There is some hard evidence in all of this though. Barry's selection to the All Star team by the fans shows that he isn't necessarily the hated figure that the media wants him to be, and the media's continued assault on Bonds proves that they are out to get him no matter what. Because he is a bad guy. I'm gonna spit on his lunch box
