Asterisks

I don't like Barry Bonds.

In my opinion, he's just another selfish African-American athlete who speaks his mind about racial injustice only when he's fucked up in a big way (infidelity, tax evasion, being a major league asshole) and needs camouflage. Otherwise, throughout his brilliant but turbulent career, his single response to political questions has always been the same: "I'm here to play the game, man."

Still, if Barry Bonds is being blackballed from baseball for the 2008 season because of his past use of steroids, then I think Bonds is being unfairly persecuted, and it needs to stop. And no, it's not for the reasons you suspect.

Yeah, Bonds is rude, arrogant, and nasty, but he'll certainly have plenty of company in the Hall of Fame (Oh, Mr. Cobb? When you're finished pulling your cleats out of that guy's face, can you step over here?). More to the point, what really gets me angry is the idea that Bonds has poisoned the spotless purity of Baseball is revisionist bullshit. It's like the guy who thinks he's not cheating on his wife because he took off his wedding ring.

Let's be honest, O.K.? Cheating has always been a part of the game, it's just that the owners, the commissioner, the writers, the players, and the fans have chosen to ignore it. Guys have taken "greenies", thrown spitballs, and corked their bats for decades. Whatever works, right? When Jose Cancesco, Sammy Sosa, and Mark McGwire became these lumbering, muscle-swollen behemoths slamming balls out of stadiums, how did people think they got that way? As Richard Pryor said when his wife caught him in bed with another woman, "Who are you gonna believe? Me or your lying eyes?"

Although the official rules in baseball say, "Don't Take Steroids", what the fine print says is, "Don't Get Caught". The last I heard, Bonds hasn't been convicted of anything yet, so if they decide to keep Bonds out of the Hall of Fame sometime in the future, they better kick out Gaylord ("I don't where that Vaseline came from") Perry out first. Let's not mention Roger Clemens, alright?