Bonds spin is far gone, By: Doug Krikorian, Sports Columnist
The rhetoric has been overheated, spectacularly vindictive, as though the guy has committed a heinous crime worthy of incarceration at Pelican Bay State Prison.
Kick Barry Bonds out of baseball, urge sports talk radio listeners with their usual hysteria, as well as many in the sporting literati shorn of reasoned perspective.
No way Barry Bonds ever should be inducted into something as sacred as the Hall of Fame, even though it's brimming with alcoholics, bigots, spielers, misogynists, fixers, drug addicts and a lot of other types that would not serve as role model exemplars.
Do something, Bud Selig, anything, bound, gag and quarter Bonds, remand him to Baghdad, or even worse, force him to star in a Pauly Shore flick.
Oh, please!
I've heard of steroid rage, but now a condition has come upon the scene that is retroactive media steroid rage.
Suddenly, because Sports Illustrated recently printed excerpts from a forthcoming book called "Game of Shadows" that will detail Bonds' steroid usage that began after the 1998 season, it is now fashionable to pounce on Bonds, as though he were guilty of a crime against nature.
This is not a feeding frenzy.
It's worse.
This is an Inquisition.
I mean, what precisely did Barry Bonds do that is so reprehensible?
I mean, after watching two pumped up individuals named Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa wage their famous home run duel during that summer of '98, Bonds decided he, too, would pursue a regimen that would pump up his anatomy.
I mean, what's the big deal?
Steroids weren't banned from baseball at the time and it was common knowledge by anyone with even the faintest weightlifting awareness that a lot of guys were using them around the sport.
Shhh, keep this a secret, but I knew all along that McGwire and Sosa and many other major leaguers were cramming steroids into their systems because I've been around weightlifting all my life and have seen first hand the drugs' staggering impact.
Bonds only started doing what many of his contemporaries were doing including a very famous former Dodger star who, somehow, has remained detached from this raging controversy and he became even a more potent force than he was before when I always thought he was the game's top performer.
And, remember, Bonds had struck over 400 home runs and won three MVP titles before he decided on his radical course.
I have to brace myself against a wall from falling over from laughter when I hear those pious purists who want to throw the book at Bonds because, well, they say he, omigod, cheated, which, technically, he didn't because steroids weren't a banned substance when he was using them.
Wow, that sure makes Bonds novel in a game in which cheating has been a hallowed part since its invention.
Corked bats, stealing signs, juiced pitches, you name the illegal deception, and they've employed it in baseball across the
seasons.
There is now even serious conjecture that the Shot Heard Round The World, Bobby Thomson's famous ninth-inning playoff home run that gave the New York Giants the National League pennant against the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1951, might have been tainted because the Giants allegedly had a guy with binoculars in the Polo Grounds scoreboard relaying Ralph Branca's pitches to Thompson.
And one must not forget that drug usage always has been an integral part of the game because players for years used amphetamines, also called greenies.
They also weren't banned from baseball, although like steroids they are a prescription drug.
How many games were decided across the decades by ball players who had unnatural energy because of amphetamines?
How many pitchers over the years have used foreign substances to alter their pitches to bewilder batters, and I'm not just talking about Gaylord Perry?
How many hitters over the years have used illegal bats that gave them an edge against pitchers?
Where is the sense of proportion in assessing Barry Bonds?
There is no doubt that steroids played a role in his being able to hit 73 home runs, just as they doubtless played a role in McGwire hitting his 70 and Sosa his 66.
But one must not forget that these men were not violating any baseball edicts when they consummated these achievements.
Barry Bonds still ranks as the best hitter I've ever seen steroids didn't help his matchless plate discipline and all those steroids did for him was extend the length of his home runs.
I'm a Hall of Fame voter, and I'll cast my ballot for Bonds as soon as he becomes eligible for induction into Cooperstown.
Actually, I'm more concerned about the long-term ill effects steroids will have on these players who turned to them.
A couple of my friends who were active users needed open heart surgery in their mid 40s, and another one has had continuing kidney problems.
All I know is that I thoroughly enjoyed the epic McGwire-Sosa home-run duel eight years ago, as well as watching Bonds being such a terrifying force during the 2002 World Series between Bonds' San Francisco Giants and the Angels.
I just can't get worked up into a hang-'em-from-the-gallows frenzy over Barry Bonds, a boorish individual who was an extraordinary player before he ever used steroids and is still the game's most dangerous batsman even without them and even though he's 41 years old.
