I know, got to spend less time listening to Hendrix. My point is this: If the defenders of baseball’s collective morality have protected us from Barry Bonds by not letting him play, what has been preserved?
And at what cost?
Are there any fewer players using performance enhancing drugs because Bonds hasn’t stepped onto the diamond? If Bonds is a threat to “team chemistry”, first define ‘team chemistry’? And whether, in the most individual of sports, it even matters? Have the “Youth of America” stopped playing “Grand Theft Auto” long enough to be corrupted by Bonds?
Shakespeare said it well. “Use every man according to his desert, and who shall escape whipping?” If purity of mind, body, and spirit is the standard, who indeed?
What about Manny Ramirez? He pushed the RedSox traveling secretary down because the slugger didn’t get enough tickets to distribute to family and friends. At least he didn’t take the man’s AARP card. Then, according to a sportscaster close to the team, Side Show Manny intentionally struck out in a game against the Yankees after he was fined over the incident.
Maybe Alex Rodriquez? Admittedly, we’d have to do without a lot of players if the bar was set at cheating on your wife. But who is the bigger jerk? Bonds for trying to keep up with McGwire and Sosa in the steroids arms race or ARod? And give Barry a few points for not making a spectacle of himself with Madonna.
Then you’ve got Brett Myers of the Phillies. Management rallied around him like a fallen flag in battle after he knocked his wife around on the streets of Boston. Last I heard he was still pitching, and recently commented that he was getting his swagger back. Now there is a cheery prospect.
How about the General Managers who watched as not just Bonds, but a good chunk of baseball’s power hitters turned baseball into one big chemistry experiment? Come to think of it, did even one of them get named in the Mitchell Report? And what of Bud Selig who presided over it all? Think he should join the ranks of baseball’s unemployed?
The truth is, baseball made an example of Barry Bonds for three reasons.
One they just don’t like Bonds, who has all the charm of an abandoned Russian chemical weapons lab. Two, he became the public face of a steroid scandal baseball’s executives were trying mightily to ignore. And three, at 44 he has more value utility value to baseball’s leaders as a bad example than as a hitter.
Bonds should have been in uniform from Day 1 this spring. Nobody can tell me he wouldn’t have added value to some American League team’s lineup. Or that, for reasons good and bad, he wouldn’t have put bodies in seats everywhere he played. And there is no doubt he could have been a difference maker to a contending team.
The same guys who told us baseball had no serious problem with steroids now tell us it is mere coincidence Bonds has not been signed. That the collective brain trust that is paying Eric Gagne, Andy Pettite, Jose Guillen, Tom Glavine, and Andruw Jones a total of $65,000,000 this season all spontaneously decided a player with 28 home runs, an OBP of .480, and slugging percentage of .564 was too risky a gamble to take.
Sure, Bonds had a good year they say, but Pedro Feliz was available at a mere $8,500,000 a year.
Baseball embraces its history like no other sports. On May 25, 1935 Babe Ruth hit his last home run. Three of them, in fact, with the last one leaving the park and traveling (based on accounts of where it landed) 600 feet.
The morally superior men who run the game of baseball are depriving fans of one of those moments in time. Nothing is going to be gained by preventing it, and nothing lost by letting Barry Bonds take the field one more time.
