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"If he did it, hang him!" This is
what ESPN radio host John Seibel (filling in on the Dan Patrick
show) said about Barry Bonds. Is Seibel oblivious that some may
take offense to the image of a controversial Black athlete being
lynched, or is this just red meat thrown to the worst impulses
of his audience? It would be one thing if Seibel was the exception,
but the media is in an orgiastic frenzy, lustily tearing Bonds
apart and eating him alive. Sports Illustrated this week released
excerpts of a new book Game of Shadows, which maps out in painstaking
detail the copious steroids that Bonds has allegedly consumed.
Prominent columnists are calling for his head on a spit. This
is painfully predictable payback executed by a media that Bonds
has skewered throughout his career. Sports Illustrated's Rick
Reilly, for example, said that he would like to talk to Bonds
but "He would probably just tell me to cure cancer or something."
I have always made my feelings
clear on this issue and they are unchanged: Barry Bonds is the
greatest baseball player since Babe Ruth. He is the only player
in history to have 500 home runs and 500 stolen bases. He averaged
a 30/30 (30 home runs and 30 stolen bases) for the entire decade
of the 1990s, and he is the only player I've ever seen who can
change the game with every swing. I also am partial to Bonds
because I actually LIKE when he tells someone to "go cure
cancer." I like that he asked congress why they were talking
about steroids when people still don't have heat or clean water
in New Orleans. Is it self-serving?
Sure, but no more self-serving than the writers who sell papers
by assessing the size of his body parts like he's some sort of
beast. As for whether or not he took steroids, I still believe
in something that may seem quaint in Bush's America called the
presumption of innocence. But if it is actually proven that he
took steroids, then I think its not Bonds that should be on trial
- in the court of public opinion or elsewhere - but Major League
Baseball.
Bonds is currently getting
the Gen. Janis Karpinski treatment from the baseball war room.
They want to stop the chain of command and make him the symbol
of the baseball's "juiced era" in the 1990s. Then,
after Bonds is offered up as sacrifice, the game can move on.
Sounds great, but its about as morally just as Rumsfeld still
pulling a paycheck. Baseball doesn't want the scrutiny of why
they did nothing as players began to resemble Lou Ferrigno. They
don't want people to look at why steroids were pointedly not
even a banned substance until 2003. They don't want people looking
at the Nike "chicks dig the long ball" ad campaigns,
or how they used the Mark McGwire/ Sammy Sosa home run race to
bring back fans after the 1994 lockout cancelled the World Series.
They don't want anyone to recall the X-men style cartoons they
produced of freakishly muscled players to hype the game. They
want this to stop with Barry Bonds.
Bonds is a perfect offering
to sate the media and anti-Barry fans: he is reviled by the press,
he is on the cusp of breaking baseball's most hallowed home run
records, and he is the most polarizing athlete of his generation.
But there is an unforeseen problem with this approach: part of
polarization is that people also rally to your defense. This
process is already beginning. Roger Clemens has called the latest
allegations part of a "witch hunt". Hall of Fame Brooklyn
Dodger Duke Snider said, "I think enough has already been
said about this. Do you think it is any easier to hit a ball
if you use the stuff?"
But perhaps the most stirring
defense has come from Giant Hall of Famer Willie McCovey who
said,
"He has never been tested
positive. We're supposed to live in a world where you're supposed
to be innocent until proven guilty and he hasn't been proven
guilty of anything."
McCovey also raised the idea
that people who call for "hanging Bonds" summarily
dismiss: that racism is an unspoken part of this discussion.
"Knowing what I have gone
through in sports, there are always those little, you know, racial
overtones," said McCovey, who started his career in the
Jim Crow south of the 1950s.
McCovey also pointed out the
hypocrisy of how Mark McGwire, even after his sad congressional
testimony, was viewed as a tragic figure, not an evil one like
Bonds. "I don't think it would be this big a deal if McGwire
was still playing and was in the same shoes chasing that record,"
he said. "I don't think they would be spending all this
time to dig all this dirt up on him. [Racism] is a thing that
we have to live with that people don't even realize."
Even if the 1990s will go down
in history as a time when better hitting was achieved through
chemistry, that doesn't excuse the current media attack. They
are playing to people's worst instincts and ideas. They are also
being historically dishonest as they wax rhapsodic about baseball's
gauzy past. Anyone who thinks that Mickey Mantle had a big glass
of milk before every at bat is kidding themselves. The 1980s
was the era of cocaine. The 1960s was when "greenies"
or amphetamines were passed around the clubhouse like M&Ms.
The era before 1947 was a time when a significant part of the
population was segregated out of the game.
Barry Bonds is not the villain
in this particular drama. It,s Major League Baseball that needs
to be held to account. If the media won't do it, then fans are
going to have to. If Barry Bonds comes to your city, stand and
cheer for the greatest player in the game. Then gaze skyward
and boo the owners. As guardians of the game, they have failed
miserably. Don't let Barry Bonds be their patsy.
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.
