Bonds away!

So I just finished reading my copy of this week's Sports Illustrated and the excerpt from this book -- 'Game of Shadows' -- that's supposedly going to blow away Barry Bonds' reputation ...

Thing is, nothing I read tonight surprised me.

The huge amount of respect I held for Bonds as a gifted player throughout much of the 1990s started crumbling fast after his grand jury testimony was published by the San Francisco Chronicle in December '04. And it pretty much bottomed out during last season when Bonds' body --particularly his knees -- started falling apart, further cementing the evidence that he was likely using ...

But above all that, this winter I've been reading Howard Bryant's 'Juicing the Game : Drugs, Power, and the Fight for the Soul of Major League Baseball' -- a brilliant piece of journalism that gives the average fan an inside-baseball look, starting with the Bud Selig-led overthrow of former commissioner Fay Vincent, on through the devastating 1994 strike and up to the Congressional testimony in the days leading up to the 2005 season. In the book, Bryant takes a hard look at Bud Selig and the owners who were too busy counting their bills and enjoying the homeruns flying out of their new retro parks to do anything about steroids (even while they had the knowledge and studies to prove performance-enhancing drugs were taking over the game) and the players union, which had become too powerful for its own good to give into the owners proposals or care about the integrity of the game.

It's an incredibly fascinating book that I've barely been able to put down since I started reading ...

But I digress ...

On Tuesday, during a train ride into Chicago (I visited the Field Museum's new 'Evolving Planet' exhibit -- very interesting. And I learned that we're going extinct ... but that's another post), I began reading the final chapters of Bryant's book which focuses on Bonds' rise and fall in the major leagues. It was ironic because, by the time I was returning home, everything I'd been reading all day was now the top story on every sports radio program ...

The bottom line, as Bryant portrayed it, is that Bonds is a man haunted by what he believes is a lack of respect for his race and his father's playing days. Never mind the fact that by the mid '90s Bonds had already earned an armload of MVP awards and put up Hall of Fame numbers. Bryant writes in his book that Bonds was a man frought with jealousy and a man who was out simply to tear every white man's record from the books. So when Mark McGwire captured America's hearts in 1998 by clobbering 70 homeruns, Bonds seethed. Not only had fans all but forgotten Bonds, he was enraged that McGwire wasn't the multi-tooled player he had been ... So Bonds set out to beat McGwire and the white man with whatever it took ...

Now? Although past history gives us little hope, Bud Selig must take a hard look at the evidence surrounding Bonds' steroid use and for once in his commissionership take a proactive approach by sending a message to everyone who plays or cares about the game that it will not allow performance-enhancing drugs. Selig must be firm on Bonds the way Bartlett Giamatti was hard on Pete Rose. If that means suspending Bonds from the game or erasing his 73 homeruns in 2001 from the books, so be it. ... That said, do I think Bonds should be banned from the Hall of Fame? No -- although Bonds is perhaps no longer a first-ballot winner, as other writers have said this week, he did have Hall of Fame numbers before his alleged steroid use between 1999 and 2004, just like Pete Rose amassed a Hall of Fame career before allegedly betting on baseball ... Nonethless, a suspension handed down by Selig would at least protect Hank Aaron's career homerun record ...

Here's what some of America's best sports writers and columnists -- and David Wells -- have to say ...
a Pittsburg Post-Gazette/Gene Collier: An ultimate interview with Barry Bonds
a San Francisco Chronicle/Joan Ryan: In post-truth era, facts mean less
a San Francisco Chronicle/Ray Ratto: Resolution? Not with our Barry It'll be business as usual, for all the usual suspects
a Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune/Patrick Reusse: Most players have a weak response to steroid flap
a The Washington Post/Tony Kornheiser: Medically Creamed and Cleared
a David Wells thinks Bonds should admit steroid use