I watched a press conference the other night. Barry Bonds was lashing out against, well everyone. It struck me as odd. Bonds used steroids over the last few seasons to set some impressive marks in baseball. He cheated. Yet to listen to him, he feels cheated. He has become the victim. Bonds lashed out at the media for hounding him with an old story, at one point, he even attacked the media with a “only those who are without sin may cast a stone" argument. Basically, he told the reporters they could not write about his lies because they were all liars too. It was ludicrous. Gwen Knapp of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote a good piece about her own lies 'A big confession: I lied about Bonds', they are lies of omission. Why did we ignore the obvious?
Bonds claims to have repeated taken steroids by mistake. WTF? I would not accept that excuse by my children, why would I accept it from a millionaire baseball player?
Bonds claims steroids do not help him hit the ball. Well… it might not help with hand eye coordination, but it sure gives one a couple of extra yards of flight bucko, some of your short fly balls were converted to homers because of a little extra juice.
Bonds even claims we are after him because he is black. It never crossed his mind that we are "after him" because he cheated? Or that we are "after him" because he violated our trust in his pursuit of an honorably attained record by a legitimate hero of baseball?
Nobody likes a cheater; it does not matter if he hits 700 home runs, or 7. I hope his runs are disallowed. I hope he owns up to his mistake and pulls his numbers out of contention. I hope that 20 years hence, when discussing the greats of baseball, we can look back at Bonds and say he did the right thing. But I’m a realist. It won’t happen.
