Home Run King* Indicted

I don't really have time to make another post, but there is just too much going on to avoid it.

First off is the reality that Barry Bonds seems destined to continually reclaim his throne as most hated player in sports. Just after it seemed Arod might be poised to take the throne amongst baseball players, Barry gets indicted. Surely it can't come as any surprise to anyone, aside from only the most delusional citizens of San Francisco. The man obviously used steroids and just about anything else he could find that might be injected, ingested, or rubbed on his body in the hopes of stealing the spotlight back to himself. For those who don't know, the story seems to be that in 1998 as the Big Mac/Sosa battle was going on, Barry started pouting that they were getting all the attention while he was winning all the MVP awards. So, as the story seems to go, Bonds confided in friend Ken Griffey Jr. that he was going to start cheating right along with Mark and Sammy. The story is a hard one not to believe. Here is some evidence:

Young Barry Bonds - '98 Bonds - '04

Go ahead and ask any doctor you'd like how common it is for a man to put on that sort of muscle in his late 30's, it just doesn't happen. If Barry had simply taken the Giambi route and fessed up we might have been able to forgive him, at least a little. Instead he lied in court, he lied to the press, and he continues to act like the world owes him something for being Barry Bonds. He will continue to play the 'scapegoat' card, implying that the reason everyone hates him is because he's black. Now I would certainly never imply that there isn't a race issue in this country, there is a huge amount of racism that still exists in America, including in sports (I'll blog on that sometime soon). Yet it just isn't the case when it comes to the fans hating Barry Bonds. If Ken Griffey Jr. were the one who just broke the record the sports world would still be celebrating in jubilee, support can be seen in an article my friend Ryan wrote for the Burnside Writer's Collective. If only it could have been Griffey, if only he'd had the career we all dreamed he would have when he was just a kid with a million dollar smile and the most beautiful swing in baseball. But alas, it wasn't Griffey, until Arod breaks it Bonds will hold what used to be the most cherished record in baseball. A record that is now more like the ugly scar that points to past betrayal.

The sad thing about the whole indictment itself is that as a baseball fan a big part of me just wants the Barry Bonds saga to be over, but instead this is going to make sure that Barry is on Sports Center every night. I on the other hand don't want to be a part in continuing to give this story legs, even amongst the small number of people who read this blog, so consider this sentence the last you'll read from me directly on the subject of Barry Bonds.