As someone with a sports-themed blog, and also a die-hard baseball fan, I would be negligent if I didn't address the story of the last 24 hours: Barry Bonds and his federal indictment on perjury and obstruction of justice charges. For the last few years, I have been frustrated with the extent to which the media has obsessed over Bonds, as the focal point of the entire steroids problem in baseball. Had I been running this blog over the last 2 years, there's a pretty good chance that Bonds related stories would have received the coveted "Overblown Non-Story of the Week Award" on more than one occasion. This story, however, on it's face is highly significant. The indictment, and it's claim that the feds have evidence of Bonds testing positive for steroids, in particular, represents the first evidence of any substance to come out against Bonds in several years - various accusations, innuendo, and conjecture that have occurred in the meantime aside. So, while the indictment itself and the court proceedings to follow will likely receive ridiculously disproportionate coverage over the next weeks and months, I say right now, this is a big deal.
Before I go much further, I want to lay out where I have come down on Barry Bonds. First of all, I have to be honest, I find him to be a rather despicable human being. He comes off as extremely arrogant in his dealings with virtually everyone he deals with. He's had several incidents come to light in the last several years that cast serious doubts about his integrity and his character. He is standoffish and thoroughly unlikeable, and brings a good portion of the treatment he receives from the media and fans on himself. That being said, Bonds' career began right as I was really beginning to follow baseball, with a local rival to my Phillies, the Pittsburgh Pirates. From the beginning, his incredible talent for the game was clearly evident, and he was legitimately in the argument as to who was the best player in the game, long before the slightest hint of steroid allegations found him.
When his incredible power surge grabbed everyone's notice in 2001, when he set the major league single season record with 73 HRs, the steroid whispers were there. I defended him at the time, but began looking over his career, and scrutinizing him more carefully. In the 6+ years since then as various evidence (99% or more of it circumstantial, mind you) came to light , I've come to believe personally, like most baseball fans, that Bonds had in fact used performance enhancers, and as such was a cheater. However, absent anything concrete (most notably a failed drug test, especially from some point after 2003, when baseball finally actually outlawed steroids) I was forced to adopt an "innocent until proven guilty" stance and thus have yet to join the throngs calling for suspensions, jail, and the removal of Bonds' records from the books. When something concrete surfaces, that position is likely to change. You will never catch me defending Barry Bonds, I'm simply about affording him the same protections that I believe everyone should be entitled to, regardless of my personal feelings about him.
And that, my friends, is what I find disturbing as I reflect back over the last few years and how fans and media have treated the Bonds issue. It alarms me how quickly many people are willing to forgive questionable behavior, if it produces a result that we want. It became clear to me several years ago that there were a large portion of people who had made up their minds on Bonds (fairly or not) and that with most of those people, virtually anything fair game in order to "get" Bonds. Bonds haters for several years have been responding to those who tell them there is no concrete proof that Bonds cheated by citing Bonds' admission that he took the "cream" and the "clear", two designer steroids, not knowing what they were. That's all well and good, except that that admission came in sealed grand jury testimony that someone broke the law by letting out. Several of the other more stinging accusations have contained information that was supposed to be sealed/confidential. In the pursuit of THE "bad guy", many people haven't even batted an eye in aligning themselves with other "bad guys". I've made my opinion on Bonds clear, but the simple fact of the matter is that bad behavior never justifies more bad behavior. And you can condemn the bad behavior of those pursuing Bonds without giving Bonds a pass for his actions. Very few people have seemed interested in doing that, however.
I am very alarmed at the fact that the court of public opinion as it relates to Bonds has seemed to say "I don't like you, and so you're not entitled to any privacy or the other basic protections afforded you under the law." If Barry Bonds broke the law and there is proof, he should be punished in the legal arena. If he violated the rules of baseball, and there is proof, he should be punished by baseball. However, it's a very dangerous path to be on when as a people we decide that our personal opinions about someone should have an impact on what extent they are entitled to due process and justice.
2 months ago
8 comments:
I like Barry Bonds and always have. I don't find most criticisms of him particularly persuasive. When people say he is "arrogant," what they mean is that he thought he was the best player in baseball. He was the best player in baseball (even before anyone alleges he started taking steroids, which was supposedly 1998), so I'm not sure why he was supposed to pretend that he didn't know that.
You're certainly right about his being standoffish, but this is an accident of fate. The fact is that the man doesn't like people very much. What's wrong with that? If he didn't have so public a job, nobody would care or think he was terrible because of it. The fact that he does have a very public job is no fault of his own. It so happens that the thing he is really, really good at, which doesn't have anything to do with dealing with people, happens to involve an awful lot of dealing with people, particularly the press who have always treated Bonds poorly.
I should add, however, that I don't think much of Bonds's marital history and I do think criticism of him on that score is 100% justified.
However, I stopped defending Bonds against steroids accusations about the time Game of Shadows came out. I may not approve of the authors' methods, but they certainly seemed to have the goods.
It's a pity, really. In 1998, Bonds was (still) the best player in baseball. (Note: I agree that a number of people had a better season than Bonds in that specific year. Lou Boudreau probably had a better year than Ted Williams in 1948; Williams was still the best player in baseball.) Bonds was better than Griffey, better than McGwire, and better than Sosa. However, nobody but Bonds (and me) seemed to know that he was still the best player in baseball. Bonds had to conclude from the home run furor of '98 that steroids was the only way he could reclaim his title. (While nothing has been proven to this day, everybody in baseball believed that McGwire and Sosa were both juicing.) Bonds knew he was the best, but he was so insecure that he also needed everybody else to know that he was the best. Because of this insecurity, Bonds apparently took steroids and put together the most dominant performance baseball has ever seen. More dominant than Babe Ruth or Ted Williams. For this insecurity, Bonds will forever pay with his reputation.
I find it tragic and pitiable that such a confident man could be so insecure.
As for the criminal case, I think it's mostly nonsense. Bonds was indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice and nothing else. This is the government's usual tactic when it's in trouble: "We know you're guilty, but we can't prove it so instead we're going to put you on trial for saying you were innocent of that thing we couldn't prove." Surprisingly, they often get a conviction in these sorts of cases.
It is true that the media has always treated Bonds poorly, but at the same time, it is equally true that he always treated them poorly. As far as who started it, I can't say that with 100% certainty, but I'm pretty sure it was Bonds.
While I don't condone the media dealing more harshly with someone just because they don't like him or he treats them poorly, it's clearly the way it works.
As for the criminal case, I don't necessarily disagree on some of your points, but the bottom line is that when Bonds testified in the BALCO case, he was given immunity, so the only way he was going to get in any legal trouble as a result of his testimony was if he lied and they could prove it. They weren't going after him then. So, he made that bed, my several issues with how the whole criminal case has run aside.
I don't have time to go into much more now, but Bonds' arrogance goes far beyond just knowing he was a great baseball player, IMO.
I should mention that I bristle whenever anyone uses the word "arrogant." I always ask myself when I hear it, "Is this a humble man (or woman) who is saying this?" The answer is always no.
I hear that.
And yet I don't necessarily believe you have to be a perfect model of humility (I certainly wouldn't claim to be one) to label behavior as arrogant.
Really, you can call it whatever you what, but I see in Bonds a pattern of behavior and speech that says "I'm above the rules and the laws, and anyone who questions me is worthy of my contempt." That's just been my take, and I don't claim to have the definitive take on Bonds the person.
The bottom line I was getting at is that I don't like him as aperson, I believe he cheated at baseball, and yet neither of those things condone the kind of bad behavior that has characterized the people who have been going after him.
Actually, we probably don't disagree on much. I admire Bonds's talent and I empathize with him more than you seem to. Just because Bonds is paranoid doesn't mean everybody isn't out to get him. I think he's like a lot of celebrities -- stuck in a field where he is forced to deal with the press and the public even though he obviously does not wish to do so. I sympathize because I think having that much attention all the time would drive me a little crazy which is why I have absolutely zero desire to ever be famous. Many such people have options; Barry Bonds doesn't really. He would be making a far worse living if he couldn't play baseball for a living and playing baseball for a living (on the level Bonds does) absolutely entails that kind of fame.
I doubt that I would get along very well with Bonds personally and I agree with you that he's a cheater and I do not approve of cheating. (One thing, though: why is Gaylord Perry's cheating considered rather cute and harmless while using steroids makes people the Devil incarnate? Whether or not Sammy Sosa was using steroids, we know he was using a corked bat and yet he doesn't seem to take much flak for that.)
I agree with you that there are genuinely arrogant people in the world and perhaps Bonds is one of them. On the other hand, I think there is a certain arrogance in judging another person as arrogant. My biggest objection, though, is how often the word arrogance is simply used as a pejorative word for confidence. Confidence is a good thing. Your definition of arrogance is one I can probably get behind, but it's an ill-defined word and it seems to have different connotations for different people.
Yeah, it seems to me that we would be in pretty close agreement in most aspects on this. Whether he was paranoid before or not, I don't know, but his paranoia is pretty justified these days, given that, as I pointed out, we've reached the point where most people are willing to condone breaking the law if the end result is getting dirt on him.
It's funny that you bring up Gaylord Perry and Sammy Sosa. I've used those names quite frequently in discussions with the kind of folks who absolutely want to crucify Bonds over steroids. Perry is a particularly apt example, since, to my understanding, he was a known cheater in his day and got the same "wink, wink, nudge, nudge" treatment that steroids use clearly received until a few years ago. We've learned that virtually everyone who played in Aaron's day, including Aaron himself, took greenies, which were banned at that time. Cheating is cheating to me, but I agree with you, not everyone seems to see it that way.
I will say though that it's not just the person of Bonds that makes that distinction in the case of steroids. My sense is that for some reason that I can't quite a handle on, most people are legitimately more offended by steroids than virtually any other form of cheating. Part of it is that I think people overestimate the impact steroids have on performance.
I've actually seen a study that I really liked that suggested that Bonds might get as much, if not more, benefit to his hitting from the very cleverly designed elbow pad he's been famous for during his greatest years.
I think he clearly does get more from his body armor than steroids. Also, perhaps switching to the maple bats. If the timeline in Game of Shadows is true, he was on the juice for a couple of years without getting appreciably better, but he exploded shortly after he switched to maple bats.
I agree that it's not just Bonds; it's steroids, in general. People get spitting mad about steroids in a way they never have about scuffballs, spitballs, corked bats, amphetamines, etc. (Or just plain cheating. I watch players sneak footballs over the goal line when under a pileup after they've been stuffed, and the announcers never even mention that the guy is cheating.) It just baffles me; I assume it's some sort of visceral reaction.
I think the reason why MLB was so slow to respond to the steroid problem was because they didn't understand that the public was serious about this one.
I'd always believed that Bonds and other guys who used body armor reaped a great benefit by being able to lean out over the plate and be able to pull outside pitches, without fear of getting hurt, but this study looked at the unique design of Bonds' pad, particularly how it is hinged, and suggested that it also offered some significant mechanical advantages to his swing. I need to find it again sometime, it was intriguing, if nothing else.
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