One Cheer for Barry (and that of the Bronx variety)

Yesterday, it finally happened: Barry Bonds crawled (slithered?) past Babe Ruth into sole possession of second place on the all-time career home run list. If you don't live in the Bay Area, you're probably not very happy about this. No one who knows baseball denies Bonds' amazing natural gifts: for many years with the Pittsburgh Pirates and a few more with the San Francisco Giants, Bonds was the consummate 5-tool player: great glove, cannon for an arm, blazing speed on the basepaths, serious power, and good contact hitter. It's not hard to imagine that had he not made The Decision in the late summer of '98, he might have been remembered as the best all-around player to ever play the game. But having decided during summer of McGwire & Sosa to begin taking all manner of performance-enhancing substances (steroids were but the tip of the hypodermic), Bonds has become the poster boy for the decade of cheating in baseball that ran from the early-mid 90s to the early-mid 00s.

While I have no desire to be an apologist for Bonds, I do think that there's room on that poster for a bunch of other boys. Put a picture of MLB Commissioner Bud Selig doing what he does best (nothing) right smack in the center, twice as large as any of the other images. Selig is the single person most responsible for the chemical mess baseball finds itself in. I daresay that were he not a former owner himself, he would have never sat on his hands while the signs and rumors of juicing were abundant. But fans were filling the stands, and owners and players were both getting rich. His lack of moral leadership has cost the game its integrity, and that will prove to be harder to get back than the fans were after the strike of '94.

Jose Canseco, Mark McGwire, and (probably) Sammy Sosa are also more to blame for MLB's present deplorable condition than Bonds is. For Bonds at least has the excuse of five-year olds everywhere: "But they did it first!" Assuming that the account in Game of Shadows is accurate (and there is no reason not to), Bonds decided to juice after seeing the success on the field and adoration in the stands that the cheaters who came before him had achieved (sic). Bonds figured that if these lesser talents could make themselves into ersatz super heroes while the Commissioner, Players Union, press, and fans looked the other way, then why shouldn't he? This is not, of course, the reasoning of the morally upright, but the temptation to keep up with the Joneses is one most of us are familiar with.

So by all means, put an asterisk by all of Barry Bonds numbers earned after the 1998 season. Just don't forget to do the same for McGwire's numbers from possibly as far back at the late 80's; those of Canseco,Palmeiro, and Sosa should get them too. And while Selig has no numbers to put an asterisk by, perhaps we could make sure the explanation of the asterisk at the bottom of the page reads: "these numbers are likely inflated as there is evidence that this player was juicing during the Selig-Steroid era."