Shattered Records- A Busted Rep- and One Man’s Ride to the Hall of Shame

Barry Bonds has done it.  He has beaten the one man who we truly can say was “bigger than the game”.  Bonds has hit 715 homers as of today, one more than Babe Ruth’s career total of 714.  This is something that has only been achieved once in baseball history, but with steroid allegations looming, there wasn’t much enthusiasm for this milestone outside of the Bay Area.  

We fans can feel cheated all we want.  We can feel that we were deceived and that we wasted money to see Victor Conte’s chemistry project bash baseballs into McCovey’s Cove.  However, we are not the victims here.  The game of baseball is not the victim here, because it is the fans who decide what the game truly is.  If we keep paying our money to see games and celebrating the game and its athletes, baseball will be fine.  The real victim here is the big-headed one himself, Barry Bonds.
Now, I’m not saying that the media has been too harsh on Bonds and we should pity him for all he’s gone through because he forced it on himself.  I’m also not going to bash Barry for juicing because there have been enough people doing that for me.  

I’m just the objective baseball fan here to point out that, in the long run, Barry will be the only person to have to suffer major consequences of his own actions.  Bonds is the one who will have to deal with the constant ridicule of fans.  Bonds is the one that will never be able to face a reporter or show his face in public again after his career is over.  Bonds is the one who will have to dodge the flying syringes tossed onto the field when he enters a rival stadium.  Bonds is the one who will have to explain the “steroids scandal” to his grandkids in 20 years when their friends tell them, “My dad says your grandpa cheated at baseball…”

Barry has accomplished things in his career that no player has ever done.  No other human being has ever hit 400 homers and stolen 400 bases in their career.  Bonds has 715 homers and 506 stolen bases.  That’s pretty impressive.  Nobody else has ever hit more than 70 homers in a season.  Bonds had 73 in 2001.  Nobody has ever scared the daylights out of pitchers more than Bonds, who has drawn a total of 2358 walks in his career, 168 more than Rickey Henderson, number 2 on the list.  

Barry would’ve been a surefire HOFer without the juice, but now his legacy is so tainted that he may be “Pete Rose’d” before he gets the chance to go into the Hall.  Again, baseball will go on if Barry doesn’t get into the Hall of Fame.  The fans of the game likely won’t be too upset if this happens.  In the long run, Barry is the only person who will be victimized here and it is rightfully so.

There is also the case of the others who have juiced, such as Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Jose Canseco, (probably) Sammy Sosa, and others in question.  They will certainly have to suffer the fates of their actions as well, but nobody is more at the forefront right now than Barry Bonds.  Bonds is in the frontline and always will be because he’s the one with the single season record, and he’s the one who passed the Sultan of Swat in career homers.  The other guys may not get into the HOF because of steroid allegations and they also may not be able to be a part of the game anymore, but nobody will get the kind of abuse and criticism that Bonds will have to endure for the rest of his life.

Some people may also argue that the game has been tainted forever by Bonds’ actions, and that guys like Albert Pujols will never be fully accepted because the steroid cloud will always be looming.  However, when you look at the evidence, you would have to wonder why.  Let’s take the case of Pujols as an example.  He is 6’3″, 225 pounds.  Jim Thome is 245 pounds, and have there ever been steroid questions surrounding him?  No.  Ryan Howard is 254 pounds.  Steroid questions?  No.  Carlos Delgado is 240 pounds.  He has always been thought of as a clean player.  Of course you can keep going and going with these clean big guys in the game today because that’s just the way it is.  In fact, compared to other sports, these sizes are right on par.  Shaun Alexander?  225 pounds.  LaDanian Tomlinson (5’10”)?  221 pounds.  LeBron James?  240 pounds.  Jaromir Jagr?  233 pounds.  How is it that these guys, who, like Pujols, have been big their whole lives, don’t have steroid questions surrounding them when Pujols is constantly hearing the whispers?  Once baseball fans realize that these are all just big guys because they’re athletes and that’s their job, they will stop with this nonsense.

Barry Bonds, unlike Pujols, was not always a big guy.  He was a leadoff hitter who stole bases and hit 20 homers a season in his days with Pittsburgh in the late 80s and early 90s.  Then, upon arriving in San Francisco, it was obvious that he was trying to change his game to become more of a power hitter, since, after all, chicks dig the long ball.  Everyone was giving attention to the home run hitters and, according to the story, Barry, the complete player, didn’t like that these “inferior” baseball players were loved more than he was.  Barry bulked up and, as his home run totals started to increase, his stolen base totals started to decrease.  

The evidence is all there that Bonds did the juice and now he will have to suffer the consequences that go along with it.  Not only does he have to worry about the negative attention from the media and the fans, but also the physical toll it takes on the body.  Barry’s bones and joints didn’t grow along with his muscles and now the 190-pound frame will have to support his new 240-pound body.  We’ve already seen the effect on his knees as he had to miss almost the entire 2005 season and has been played sparingly this year.

It’s also easy to lose sight of the fact that steroids are a drug.  We’ve seen how they can have such a tragic effect on a body with misuse in the case of Ken Caminiti, who died at the young age of only 41 because of drug use mixed with steroids.  I’m not saying that Barry Bonds is going to die young as well; just that this is another risk anybody is taking when they use steroids.

In the end, Bonds will be the one left alone on his island.  Everyone else will have moved on, but Barry will never escape from the juice.  Whether it’s the physical problems or the badgering from the media, Bonds will always be victimized by steroids, while fans and the game of baseball will look back at this as just a black mark in the game’s history, rather than its demise.