Act Like You Know: Barry Bonds is an Asshole.
Q: Anything New Here?

Thu Apr 6, 08:19 PM by Joseph McClune

Heads up, pencils down!

Let us check your quiz…

If you marked B – No, you get an A.
If you marked C – Who Cares? you get half credit.
If you chose A – Yes, I was under the impression that Barry Bonds has always been a very friendly and jocular baseball competitor! this is the wrong answer.

Barry Bonds IS an asshole. Everyone who watches sports in any capacity whatsoever has known this for years. Since his days in Pittsburgh, he has always been standoffish and shitty with the media, with fans, and apparently also with his mistress, according to that damned book.

The issue at hand is not that Barry Bonds is an asshole. What IS pertinent, however, is that he is currently being vilified as some sort of “baseball history tainter.” Reason being that it’s apparent to everyone including all of my grandparents that every night, Barry hooks himself up to the giant bottle of HULK MAD 180 PROOF that hangs above his 8-post bed (it’s octagonal, like UFC!) and basically just becomes superman. Or, at the very least, he used to. Now, It might be MR HYDE SPF 8,000,000,000. Who knows.

After becoming this alternate being borne of steroid magnificence, Barry understandably Hits Lots of Dingers. A lot of people are saying things like “Barry doesn’t deserve the records he has set,” and “He is cheating,” and “He is hurting baseball by breaking the holiest record in sports.” People basically think that his steroid use has harmed the game, and that it will be a shame if he breaks Hank Aaron’s all-time homerun record.

This is patently not fair. Now, full disclosure: I am a Giants fan from the Bay Area, but I assure you: I cannot stand Barry Bonds. He is a total douchebag, and I despise him. But I still do not think it is fair to put any sort of responsibility on his head for any damage done to the game as a whole.

The reason why:
I know that to some of you the following is obvious, but look at the facts for a second: in 1998 Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa had their amazing home run derby year, hitting 70 and 66 home runs, respectively. In the process they destroyed Roger Maris’ record of 61 home runs, which previously was the first time anyone had hit more than 59 in a season since Babe Ruth hit 60 in 1927. That record was basically the “like whoa” of baseball, along with Hank Aaron’s all-time of 775 homers.

Now, if you watched any baseball in 1998, you saw Big Mac and Sammy quite a bit. And you also saw that their arms were literally about the widths of watermelons. The men were on the juice, and it was obvious. But Major League Baseball liked having their best ratings in a decade, and turned a blind eye. They also turned a blind eye in 2001 when a ridiculously bulked up Bonds hit 73 homers, breaking McGwire’s record.

Given this previous situation with McGwire and Sosa, all the talk about Barry Bonds doing steroids seems silly. Yes, Barry is a dick. Yes, he is a criminal (steroids are illegal!). But if you blame him for being a criminal, you also have to blame McGwire, Sosa, Canseco, Giambi, Palmeiro, and anyone else who broke the law. You also have to blame your friends who smoke weed, and your mom, who outran the cops on her motorcycle last week. That’s also a felony, buddy.

If someone is to be blamed for the problem with steroids, it’s Major League Baseball. They made a killing off of men destroying their bodies with steroids, and the problem can be solved simply by banning the drugs and testing for them. No asterisks, no record erasures. These are the “solutions” that will taint the game. A simple, irrefutable fact: Barry Bonds is (or was) a fantastic baseball player. Call him an asshole, but don’t call him a cheater.

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