Taking A Hit for the Team

- from left to right. Baseball cards from 1986, 1997, and 2006.

Barry Bonds just passed Babe Ruth’s for second place on major league baseball’s All-Time Homerun list. While Bonds is making history and grabbing headlines, steroids continue to be the argumentative subplot throughout baseball. Make no mistake. Babe Ruth’s portly body was no temple. Ingesting hot dogs and beer, Ruth managed to hit 715 homeruns for basically the love of the game. The bodies of professional player’s bodies today are worshipped but are not houses of the holy either. Players have become multi-million dollar insurance policies who canvass every nook and cranny for fair and unfair advantages over other players. Because of peer pressure to protect their investment and major league baseball’s call not to play hardball with a steroid policy until 2002, baseball players resorted to employing not only trainers but chemists in their diets.

The use of steroids is a question of ethics when levied against the history and sacrilege of the game. My problem with Barry Bonds is his denial of steroid use if he has been a user and benefited as such. Barry Bonds denies the implications. A guilt-free carefree Barry Bonds told a federal grand jury he only ever ingested Flintstones vitamins. Looks and testimony must be deceiving. I do not want to be called a sycophant for taking a shot at a star because I fear that too many baseball players sold their soul for a chance at fame and fortune. However, changing the chemical constitution of your body can be categorized as cheating by some word aficionados. Using steroids taints the record book and it eats at the uniformed fabric of a game synonymous with America.

A homerun is the culmination of an enormous physical feat of coordination, strength, and execution. There is something so grandiose about hitting a 90 plus mph baseball beyond the confines of the designated playing field that the feat is revered. Steroids have become a non-quantifiable part of the equation. Nevertheless, watching Barry Bonds circle the base paths after an upper deck moon shot seems like a hollow victory for a man and the tradition of baseball. A defiant act that should sicken any baseball purist or baseball historian is witnessing Barry Bonds pointing a single finger digit towards heaven after tagging one. No matter what your shareholder’s stake is, thanking your magnanimous creator without recognizing your diabolic chemist seems jaded.

Barry Bonds has had a pedigree upbringing by former baseball players but while his jeans have changed to larger sizes, he is not uncomfortable with his genes. Willie Mays is his godfather and Bobby Bonds is his father. If you cheated the system Barry, was it awkward when you zoomed past your godfather in the rankings on the All-Time Homerun list? Did Mays ever stop to say hey, kid, what are you doing? Is it okay with dear old dad? There is an inarguable striking difference to Barry Bond’s physical appearance from when he first entered the major leagues to now. I hate to judge a book by its cover but Barry Bond’s body has morphed. The above photos were taken a decade apart and it is no wonder that there are strong suspicions that Bonds intravenously injected the equivalent of cattle into his system. He looks like a waterlogged bloated bovine that can hardly run a straight line without gimping.

Years from now, long after current player careers are over but before natural causes claim them off waivers; our children’s heroes may be dropping dead from complications of steroids. Parents will have serious explaining to do and the truth about which players did steroids will seem like an injustice if it only edges out as small print in the obituaries. Somebody ought to start crying foul. I might not be able to hit a baseball out of a major league infield on the fly but I might outlive professional baseball contemporaries who can. I am a baseball purist and I am not too vein to admit it. The All-Time homerun record of Hank Aaron is now in sight so all eyes will remain glued on Barry Bonds. Barry Bond’s home run trot around the baseball paths has never looked so lonely. In his chase of baseball immortality, Barry Bonds may also be killing himself. For all the other baseball players not singled out by name here, let us not forget that Barry Bonds is taking a hit for the team.