Other Voices: Abuse of Bonds the real embarrassment, By Matt Pacenza

May 18, 2006, (N.Y.) TIMES UNION

Barry Bonds isn't O.J. Simpson.

But you might conclude that, given the hatred hurled at Bonds by fans and media each time he limps into left field.

Let's just take a deep breath for a moment. Ignore those who just wish Bonds would go away. "You embarrass the game," they say, forgetting that a 41-year-old man who can barely run still has a .481 on-base percentage and leads the majors in baseball's most significant stat.

Bonds doesn't embarrass me. Who does? The pundits, the talk-radio bobbleheads and the sports columnists, with their willful disregard for history, truth and perspective.

In their fury to bury Bonds, they show only jaw-dropping hypocrisy.

Cheating has been in baseball for nearly as long as the ball and the strike. Where to start? We could talk about the "Shot Heard 'Round the World." Many now believe that when New York Giant Bobby Thomson hit his iconic home run, he knew what Ralph Branca was going to throw, thanks to a sign-stealing system.

Let's look at Hall of Fame pitcher Whitey Ford, the crafty lefty with the .690 winning percentage. Ford liked to "doctor" the ball, cutting it with his ring and belt buckle and smearing it with baby oil and turpentine, according to contemporaries and teammates. Like countless other pitchers who looked for an edge.

Those players actually broke baseball's rules -- unlike Bonds, who is accused of taking steroids before they were banned.

But steroids are different from spitballs or scuffballs, the angry mob says. Unnatural -- another level of cheating. Perhaps, but drugs have been around a long time, too. Whatever you call them, amphetamines have been common in baseball for at least 40 years, through the career of untold major leaguers, from Hank Aaron to Cal Ripken.

Are their famous numbers clean and unspoiled? I don't know -- and neither do you. But it's just the numbers of today's disgraced sluggers that we're supposed to eye with suspicion. Even though no one really knows what they took -- or for how long. And no one can possibly know how much steroids actually helped these athletes, relative to their exhausting training regimens, not to mention this era's smaller ballparks.

How else can you explain that Bonds hit the most homers of his career in his late 30s, when most are grimacing through card shows? Uh, Hank? The great Aaron hit the most homer of his career when he was 37.

Let's turn to the case of Derrick Turnbow, closer for the Milwaukee Brewers, currently tied for third in baseball with 12 saves.

Unlike Bonds, Turnbow actually was caught using. He tested positive for androstenedione, a steroid precursor, when he was trying out for the U.S. Olympic team back in 2003. But that has gone virtually unnoticed.

All this leaves me to conclude that Bonds' real sin is not that he used steroids, but that he's a jerk, aloof and arrogant. Our perception of athletes is driven by the media, who feed on access to the stars.

Bonds never learned to ape that winning-is-everything song, so ably uttered by bland stars like Derek Jeter. Instead, he refused to talk, snapped and sulked. He got a reputation as selfish. Not a team player. That dark helmet he was wearing before the steroids scandal became the perfect receptacle for outrage and indignation.

Personally, I couldn't care less if athletes are good guys. I also don't worry about whether George Clooney is nice to his co-stars or if Eminem gives good quotes. Nor, frankly, do I really care if performers are trying to get an edge.

Sure, as a parent, I want law enforcement to try to keep steroids away from kids -- and league officials should throw the book at athletes who break the rules.

But if the cheaters are smarter than the testers, so be it. These are games played by millionaires, on teams owned by billionaires, with vast quantities of money at stake.

Enjoy sports for what they are, but please stop pretending they're something pure. It embarrasses me.