In case you’ve been too busy concentrating on your brackets, Barry Bonds is on trial. Yes, he’s facing perjury charges and is looking at hard time in the big house, but he’s also on trial with us — the fans. Whether he beats the charges against him is almost meaningless, which is unfortunate.
In fact, a recent report from the AP has Bonds’ camp having the edge in the case at the moment. Too bad it won’t matter one iota to the public. Someone with his money can put together a crack legal team. Even if Bonds is found innocent, he will still be a pariah amongst baseball purists who hate steroid users (unless, of course, they drove a few runs home for you back in the day).
Sports fans have had to deal with many players who were guilty until proven innocent or at least admitted their flaws. This is why Bonds needs to come clean about any steroid use. The majority of fans, who now watch the fringes of what was known as the “steroid era”, can call it a day with Bonds and move on.
While it may be unfair, this column will make the assumption that the majority of the public seems to have: he took performance-enhancing drugs. The case of Bonds’ standing to the general public is one more based in perception rather than facts. It’s a sad reality, but it’s what is happening.
Of course, he hasn’t been convicted of this and there’s no real tangible proof other than his super-human performance late in his career. Sadly, an admission will never come out of the giant’s mouth. Unlike his late ’90s equivalent, Mark McGwire, Bonds thinks that people still owe him something opposed to the other way around.
McGwire just seemed embarrassed and ashamed, which kept him from coming clean. Bonds has painted himself as the type who wants respect for his accomplishments despite the actions he took to get there. He’s baseball’s Mark Zuckerberg. Like the young founder of Facebook, he’s a prodigy who changed the game for better or for worse. If you think he cheated to get to the top, you can just wait in line with the rest of the whiners.
He’s made his choice about where he lies in the history of baseball. He would rather sit atop the most important record in sports than have the praise of the country’s baseball fanatics.
Last year, I wrote about McGwire and why he needed to confess. This was the right course of action partly because most people seemed to think he and his fans would be happier for getting it off his chest.
But there seems little hope for Bonds ever making a full recovery in the eyes of the public. For decades to come, he’ll make the rare public appearance (likely only with Giants-related events since they’re the only folks that appreciate him) and he will slowly become less a great ballplayer and more a walking symbol of an era of baseball most would like to ignore.
His statistics say that he should be regarded as one of the best to ever play, but stories of his illegal steroid use make this a sad tale of a player once regarded as a Hall of Fame lock to someone who will just have to buy a ticket like the rest of us.
slindauer@theeagleonline.com
