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Bonds tries for record on a field of sorrows
Bonds tries for record on a field of sorrows, By: Robert Seltzer
6/23/07
Barry Bonds is standing in the on-deck circle, ready to take a crack at eternity.
A few swings shy of the record book, he can see eternity from here, each stroke moving him closer to becoming the greatest home run hitter of all time.
Correction: He may break the home run record, but he will never be greater than Hank Aaron, the current record-holder.
Regardless of what anyone thinks about the accomplishment, however, Bonds will soon send home run No. 756 sailing into the sky and the record books. And what a sad day it will be.
If records are meant to be broken, they should be broken on playing fields, where adrenaline is the only chemical that enhances performance.
They should not be broken in laboratories, where scientists concoct the drugs that turn players into hitting machines.
Did Bonds take steroids that bloated his muscles to a size matched only by his ego and arrogance?
We do not know, not for sure, and because we do not know, the San Francisco Giants slugger deserves the benefit of the doubt.
There is only one problem with that attitude: The doubt seems overwhelming, fueled in part by "Game of Shadows," a book by two San Francisco Chronicle reporters, Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada.
"All this stuff about supplements, protein shakes, whatever," the book quotes Bonds. "Man, it's not like this is the Olympics. We don't train four years, for, like a 10-second (event). We go 162 games. You've got to come back day after day after day ... There are far worse things like cocaine, heroin and those types of things."
Perhaps. But when Bonds breaks the record, Major League Baseball should appoint some designated pallbearers, for it will represent the death of innocence and integrity in the sport. Or did that happen when commissioner Bud Selig dragged his feet on the investigation into the steroid scandal?
"I don't have any thoughts about Barry," Aaron replied recently when asked by reporters if he would attend the game in which Bonds breaks the record. "I don't even know how to spell his name."
Charlie Lord understands the outrage behind those comments.
"Bonds is one of the smartest men to ever play the game," Lord said in a recent telephone interview. "And I think he was so smart that he knew what could be tested and what couldn't be tested. He knew what he needed to get around."
Lord is the head of the YMCA in Mobile, Ala., the hometown of the great slugger — as in Aaron, not Bonds.
"I think fans want our stars to be kind of pure and the game to be played the right way," Lord said. "I don't think a lot of our players qualify."
Aaron did.
"He visits our YMCA whenever he's in town, which is quite a lot," he said. "He's such a dignified man. He doesn't want to be treated like a star."
When Bonds breaks the record, however, Aaron will not be the only victim.
"It's amazing that baseball has survived and done as well as it has with as much damage as the sport has done to itself," Lord said.
Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff agrees.
"I'm just really, really mad and upset about the whole thing," Wolff, a lifelong baseball fan, said. "When you compare the great home run hitters of today to Hank Aaron, it's not fair. It's just a damned shame that Major League Baseball failed to address the steroids scandal for so long."
Other fans, while just as saddened by the cloud hovering over the sport, have mixed feelings about Bonds.
"You wish a record would be broken by a person who is drug-free," Ken Paper, who played with the Texas Rangers in 1976, said. "But I guess the jury is still out on Bonds, even though a lot of people seem to think he's done steroids."
Pape, who graduated from MacArthur High School, is a hitting and fielding instructor at the Hack Shack, a local baseball school.
"The mere fact that we're talking about this is bad for baseball," he said. "The record will be tarnished. You'd like to see a day when drugs are not an issue. Not just for the sport, but for the kids."
And that is what makes this whole sorry episode so sad. The kids. The scandal is bigger than Bonds and Aaron, bigger than baseball.
"Every year, the Rangers invite the old players to an alumni game. We sit around and tell war stories, but nobody ever talks about steroids. It seems like a forbidden subject," Pape said.
It will burst into the open when Bonds hits No. 756.
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