Barry Bonds deserves this honor for being a world-class jerk as a man and a world-class jerk as a ballplayer. That makes him a no-class kind of guy. He may also become a convicted felon as well.
Bonds’ disrespectful treatment of wives and a mistress is well documented. So is his treatment of teammates, team management, sports writers, and fans. But it’s his overwhelming disrespect for Major League Baseball that makes him a chump and not a champ—no matter how many hits or MVP awards he obtained.
Bonds has been and always will be all about Bonds. Somewhere in that ginormous ego-inflated head of his, he thought he was better than the institution of baseball. That what was best for Barry was more important than what was best for baseball—like REAL stats, honor, and tradition. He robbed Hank Aaron of his rightful title of Home Run King.
Bonds sacrificed integrity for homeruns and in the process (along with other highly-paid douche bags and according to the Mitchell Report, club officials, MLB commissioners, and the Players Association) blew up the nation’s pastime.
As a baseball legacy and a smart guy, Bonds has been always been calculatingly shrewd about his baseball career. But when it came to fessing up to steroid use, he didn’t act very smart. Maybe the PEDs pickled his brain? Atrophied his honesty lobe?
Did Bonds really think the public would buy his mea culpa that he thought he was injecting flax oil and “didn’t knowingly” partake of steroids?
Didn’t Bonds know that in this kind of situation the cover-up is always worse than the crime? All he had to do was say, “I knew those other putzs were juicing and I wanted to level the playing field.” Not admirable reasoning, but everyone gets that. OR he could have gone for the sympathy vote and played the Bobby Bonds card: “My father was such a great ballplayer. I was afraid I wasn’t as good.” Again, cheating to succeed is boneheaded thinking, but people get that.
But to indignantly proclaim innocence—not buying it.
The headline in yesterday’s San Jose Mercury News read: Bonds’ Perjury Trial: Legend or liar? At last, Bonds’ jury gets its say.
I don’t think it matters what the court of law jury decides in San Francisco. The court of public opinion in America says Bonds will never make it to Cooperstown.
But he will stand tall in the Icky Man’s Club.
Cartoon by Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Journal, August 2007.
Cartoon by Mike Luckovich of the Atlanta Journal, February 2009.
Cartoon by Daryl Cagle.
