Those who don't regularly even follow baseball know about Barry Bonds. He's the steroids guy, the poster man for cheating in professional sports. Tried by a jury of the Fourth Estate and sentenced to be drawn and quartered
Thomas Boswell, the dean of sports columnists in the Washington Post offered some prosecutors talking points against the SF Giants left-fielder:
Here is Boswell of his chosen subject, Dr. Bonds, in the scribe's own words:
"If Bonds has his way, baseball will have to swallow him all season. He's not hiding. Instead, he's beating the drum. Why not? He's had a change of heart. Last season, on his brief reality TV show ("Bonds on Bonds" on ESPN, the shame-lite network), Bonds' eyes filled with tears as he said: "If it makes them happy to go out of their way to try to destroy me, go right ahead. You can't hurt me any more than you've already hurt me."
Now, on his Web site, he says, "I'm happy, very happy." What about the weight of multiple steroid, tax and perjury probes, investigations and commissions? "It doesn't weigh on me at all, at all," Bonds repeated. "Let 'em investigate. They've been doing it this long." But doesn't he have concerns?
"None," he said defiantly.
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Note the words used here: "...weight of multiple...probes, investigations and commissions." And he terms Bonds as defiant, as if the guy should just throw down his bat and trade in his uniform for an orange jumpsuit.
Two things are wrong with this attitude:
1) Let's suppose that Bonds did take steroids or some such substance? Is he the only player who did so? Not likely. Alex Cirtron of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and Raphael Palmiero also have been found to have used the stuff. Mark McGuire and Gary Sheffield and Jason Giambi have also come under suspicion, as well as players who make nice with the media like the Rangers' Sammy Sosa.
Isn't it odd, therefore, that Bonds seems to be the guy who is the main focus of the media attention?
2) Allegations are just that. Allegations. So far, Bonds hasn't been indicted, much less convicted of anything. He hasn't taken a drug test that has resulted in his being banned from playing for any length of time. Nor has he been indicted by Grand Jury for perjury. Yet you wouldn't know that from reading fire-eaters like Boswell:
The columnist continues:
If Bonds' current defiant stance seems to have more depth than his whiny demeanor last spring, then there's probably a simple reason. Bonds is echoing one of our oldest and most emotionally complex archetypes -- the fallen angel, the proud, ambitious transgressor who is hurled from heaven.
Who knew a left fielder could stumble into such classic material?
"Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven," Milton's Satan decided in "Paradise Lost." "To be weak is miserable. . . . My sentence is for open war, which, if not victory, is yet revenge."
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Right here is where Tom needed the services of a good copy editor. He's snapped his cap. I know Barry Bonds has a reputation for being sullen and moody. He also doesn't smile a lot. Does that make him a Satan figure, though? Hardly. It might make him somewhat similar to another great hitter who played left field, Boston's own Ted Williams, the last .400 hitter in a season and a gent with a .340 batting average and 512 home runs. Williams was often a bit of a pill in his dealings with the media. Ted liked to fish in the off-season and enjoy his privacy. He also didn't pose for pictures at the drop of a hat. He had some "attitude". Well, okay, but I doubt even the most perplexed member of the press back in the 1940s and 50 ever referred to "Teddy Ballgame" as Lucifer himself.
But Boswell is now just getting warmed up. Here he shows off the full range of his past studies in English Lit class:
Many have agreed with the poet William Blake that Milton drew such a sympathetic portrait of Satan that he was "of the Devil's party without knowing it." There may be a similarly perverse temptation in our antihero culture to shrug and give Bonds a free pass into baseball history.
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All that collective shrugging doesn't seem likely. Few people (including myself) have serious doubt about Bonds taking something during his career to help him heal faster or whatever. But its this singular persecution that I'm tired of.
Even Mr. Boswell, with the Bonds-is-the-devil tirade now tries to back pedal a little:
"So many sluggers have used performance-enhancing drugs in the last 20 years that it's almost impossible for fans to remember which star confessed (Jose Canseco), who got caught (Rafael Palmeiro), who is merely suspected (Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa) and who, like Bonds, has had an entire book written about his cheating ("Game of Shadows"), which is underpinned in part by leaked grand jury testimony.
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Well, if somebody actually wrote an entire book(!) about this, then it all must be true. And the leaked testimony--that must be all true too, not altered one bit to the advantage of one side or another. All things stated as fact in writing are true, right? That's a given, right? And all books about famous people contain the whole truth. They are never written with a thought to "juicing" up the facts a bit to sell extra copies. Every single book written about, say, the John F. Kennedy Assassination had to be 100 percent true to be printed. That's known fact!
Case closed. Bailiff, take Mr. Bonds off to ESPN Prison Camp#26!
Tom Boswell may have no doubts about Bonds' guilt. (Silly me, I prefer the old-fashioned notion of not convicting a man or woman until a trial takes place and a guilty verdict is found. But I'm just a quaint boob about such matters as Common Law.)
Whatever Barry Bonds did or didn't do, in the final analysis, should not at this juncture entitle anybody who claims to be a professional journalist to wildly overstate the man's deeds and raise them to heights of rhetorical purple prose suitable for a authoritarian dictator.
Meanwhile, Bonds will continue to play the game because there is no reason why he shouldn't. And sportswriters who would prefer to bring him down hard may or may not get the opportunity. But the truth of a matter often takes time to come to fore. Whatever lies down the road, I predict a lot more press animosity will be vented by Mr. Boswell and any other show-off sports columnist who needs a villain to make a good story.
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