Finally The Bender has come back to the blogosphere!
I've missed a lot over the last month, and I'll take the time at some point to catch up on all of it, but right now I'm gonna focus on Major League Baseball and Barry Bonds.
I'm gonna come at this from all angles, first things first, how do I feel about Barry Bonds having the record? It really doesn't bother me. In some ways it just how ridiculous it is to compare different eras to one another. Baseball is the sport where the analysts have the audacity to pretend that nothing has changed. They still held tight to Babe Ruth's career marks and ignored the fact that African Americans weren't allowed to play in the major leagues before 1947. Maybe Josh Gibson is the real all-time home run king, but we'll never know. The point is that it's really just a number, Hank Aaron still had the same career he ever had. In some ways maybe we'll all benefit from this event because we won't have to hear about every record that ever existed and we don;t have to pretend that hitting a 310 foot homer off Cy Young was the same as hitting a 400 foot homer off of Casey Fossum. I hope Barry Bonds ends up with over 800 home runs and the Peter Gammons' of the world have to cry themselves to sleep every night knowing that the game of baseball if only for one moment was actually flawed.
The most disturbing part of Bonds' record run is the fact that it's quickly become one of the most racially divisive issues since the OJ trial. The truth is that I don't necessarily get it, to me it seems obvious that Bonds used steroids, and even if every other player of this era used steroids, that doesn;t change the fact that Bonds has admitted to using (if only by accident.) I was talking to an African American gentleman in a bar the night that Barry tied the all-time mark of 755, and while he did give some incites into succesful marriages, (apparently it involves whipped cream and strawberries.) We also had to engage in a very awkward conversation about how Barry was a victim, and you don;t see anyone going after Roger Clemens, and I nodded in agreement, not only on the issues of Barry being a victim and Roger Clemens not being under scrutiny, but also on the positive effects of whipped cream and strawberries on a marriage. I wasn;t going to get into a debate about Barry in a bar because for some reason it way too serious of an issue to this gentleman. I don;t understand the vitriol on either side, why would people get so worked up over Barry Bonds in any way. The truth I'll never understand this issue and I'm giving up on understanding it even quicker than I made the similar decision back in 1994 with Orenthal James.
The second most disturbing issue for me has been Bud Selig's "hard stance." A lot of people in the media have been applauding or supporting Bud's choice not attend all of Barry's games as he went for the record, after all he had made a "Herculean effort" to see it but attending more than five games was way out of the question. Selig's stance here has been ridiculously hypocritical. It's not quite up there with the closeted homosexual preachers who condemn homosexuality, but it's right up there. (On a side note, 300 came out on DVD this week and it's definitely worth checking out.) Anyway, Selig sat by and watched as steroids took hold of his beloved game and now he refuses to reap what he sewed. You can't stand by and let steroids and homeruns hotshot your league back to popularity and then become indignant when ones of the many steroid users you helped promote takes over your record book. Guess what Bud, you have no right to take a stand now, this is the modern day Faust, bud made his deal with the devil but now he wants his soul back, it's too late.
This brings me to my theory as to why so many people hold such anger for Barry. He is the ultimate symbol of how Steroids took over Major League Baseball for over a ten year period, and maybe even longer than we ever imagined. Jose Canseco won the MVP in 1988 because of steroids, Ken Caminiti won his steroid fueled MVP in 1996. These are just the players who have admitted it. And the baseball lovers are scrambling to cut this epidemic off at the pass so they can claim it was an anomoly. Peter Gammons has been the worst offender. I've heard him on the radio chastising a fan who had the gaul to claim that Jason Giambi was using steroids again during his resurgence last season. Well, Peter, I know that Giambi's character is beyond reproach, but maybe just maybe he was cheating again. And these same defenders all applauded Rafael Palmeiro for proving he wasn;t on steroids by taking the offensive in front of congress, but then Palmeiro got caught a few months later. Of course Palmeiro was just another anomoly. In fact I'm sure Peter Gammons is still convinced that only the players who've been caught by the new steroid testing are the players who used during their careers. They ignore the fact that Barry Bonds was never caught.
Like I said before, I don't care if Bonds used steroids, but cut the crap, I'd say that more than half of the league used steroids at one point. So don't tell me that the problem has been solved, and don't pretend that it wasn't an epidemic. Steroids still rule baseball, and if we can accept that we can sit back and enjoy the games, we can each pretend that our favorite team is the only one without cheaters. But if we're going to accuse Bonds we just have be prepared to accept it when we hear the whole truth about what has gone on for the last 20 years.
