Barry Bonds is back at spring training and ready to put more balls in the water than there are at a nude beach. Normally what goes on in professional baseball preseason games is not newsworthy unless someone gets hurt, but Bonds has had a media circus following him since he broke the single-season record for home runs five years ago. And, somehow, Bonds is getting even more overwhelming attention now.
That's because of steroids, of course. It has gotten so rampant in baseball that Congress stepped in to demand stricter anti-doping rules and enforcement.
The fallout: Jason Giambi got busted. So did Rafael Palmeiro. Mark McGwire revealed that he took androstenedione, often called Andro, a steroid that was not banned by Major League Baseball until three years after Big Mac's record-breaking season. Various lesser-known players have also admitted to - or gotten caught for - steroid use over the last couple of years.
Bonds joined the list when his grand jury testimony was leaked to the press. He said he never knowingly took steroids, but he used a cream that might have contained steroids without him knowing it.
Bonds didn't "knowingly" take steroids? It sounds like he has what it takes to be in politics.
I suppose he didn't "knowingly" transform from a lean, mean, bean-pole speedster into a slugger with forearms like Popeye, either.
So, what heavy hitters are left who might be clean? Ken Griffey Jr., Adam Dunn, Alex Rodriguez, Jim Thome, Richie Sexson and Sammy Sosa - if he even plays again. Maybe.
It's too bad for these - possibly - clean guys that they have to compete against cheaters. A lot of sportswriters are clamoring for this record to be stricken and the players to be banned. But that is pointless.
Records are made to be broken. Let the cheaters break them, seeing as there is no way to catch every offender. Besides, muscles don't make ballplayers - they make ballplayers stronger.
Barry Bonds was a winner of multiple MVP titles before the steroids controversy. Steroids just helped him to knock 20 more balls a year out of the park and into San Francisco Bay. See? Balls in the water. Now you non-sports people get it.
It's the legacies that matter - how a baseball player is remembered. All he can hope for is to be remembered as the best in his time at his position; you can't compare him to anyone else. The stuff that happens off the field will be remembered too, but by the fans instead of the record books.
How many people know that Babe Ruth hit 714 home runs? Not as many as know he's a baseball legend and the first big home run hitter. How many people know that Pete Rose had 4,256 hits? Not as many as know he bet on baseball games and lied about it.
We shouldn't vilify Bonds and other cheaters too much. They are just showing that they are human, after all. Remember humans? They're the ones you see on "Cops" instead of "Access Hollywood."
Often, that's really the only difference between our entertainment aristocracy and the common shirtless mulletheads; we give the former a more glamorous forum for showing off, and we can't wait to watch them get married, have babies, abuse their spouses, break up, get caught in a scandal and fail. Isn't it sad that Billy Bush and Pat O' Brien make a living off of reporting about such stuff?
We shouldn't condemn these athletes when they do fail by ripping off all of their Cub Scout merit badges and acting like professional baseball is a contest in morality.
We should just take them off the high pedestals on which they never should have been in the first place.
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