Barry Bonds: Cheater
In this photo provided by the Syrian official news agency SANA, Syrian President Bashar Assad, right, meets with Kofi Annan, the U.N.-Arab League Joint Special Envoy for Syria, in Damascus, Syria. The meeting Tuesday followed a massacre in Houla, Syria, last week in which more than 100 people were killed, some of them women, children and entire families gunned down in their own homes. Following the meeting, Annan told reporters "We are at a tipping point." (AP Photo/SANA)
This commentary was written by CBSNews.com's Dick Meyer.
I have had one and only one hero in life: Willie Mays. Because of Willie, I have been a San Francisco Giants fan for as long as I can remember. So it pains me to see Barry Bonds, Willie's godson and a Giant, poised to steal and besmirch a proud piece of American history.
Baseball is the oldest purely American sport, with the richest and most measured history. Its records are milestones in history, big punctuation marks in the narrative kids grow up with and symbols of the times when the records were set.
When Bonds hits his 756th home run in June or July, he, too, will make his indelible mark on American history. Indeed, he is a rather perfect representative of our times and the spirit of both our sports and our leaders and celebrities. Bonds' record is ignoble and unfair to baseball history for the simplest of reasons: He cheated.
As a kid, I was a regular baseball fanatic. I memorized statistics, collected cards, pretended to be a pro when I played catch with my pal John Strauss and had a Willie Mays fan club in the storage room. I was a lousy player. There was nothing poetic or metaphysical about baseball to me, yet.
That changed somewhat in the summer of 1997 when I was producing a story about the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's first game in the majors with correspondent Russ Mitchell. We were the first journalists to be given a look at the letters Robinson wrote to his wife all through his career, which were the basis of a new biography by Arnold Rampersad.
Russ and I went to interview Roger Wilkins, the historian, writer and civil rights intellectual. Wilkins grew up black in Grand Rapids, Mich., and listened devotedly to baseball on the radio. He was about 15 when Jackie Robinson broke the race barrier.
I will never forget listening to Wilkins talk about how as a teenager, the baseball diamond was the one place it seemed a black man could get an absolutely fair shake. Balls were balls, strikes were strikes and hits were hits. Even if an umpire blew or a call or a cracker hothead came into Robinson's second base with spikes up, the fans could see the truth.
Wilkins had probably done a couple thousand TV interviews in his life. But his gaze was vague and his eyes were moist as he talked about how the baseball field was, in his eyes, the only level playing field for black people in 1947.
To some degree, that's part of why most people like sports. Skill, tenacity and accomplishment win, fair and square — or they should. Not too many people will feel that way when Hank Aaron moves to second on the home run list.
When I was growing up, there were three great numbers in baseball: 56, 61 and 2,130. But the ultimate baseball number was 714.
Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak lasted for 56 remarkable games. No one thought that record would ever be broken, and still no one thinks it will be.
Roger Maris' record of 61 homers in '61 was astounding, too. But it fell, probably to steroids. Bonds now has that record, too.
Lou Gehrig's Iron Man record of 2,130 games was considered unassailable as well. Its nobility was sealed when he was stricken with ALS — known now as Lou Gehrig's Disease — but he told the crowd at Yankee Stadium that he was the "luckiest man on the face of the earth." I was at Camden Yards in Baltimore when Cal Ripken broke that record. Cal earned it, and did so with honor. A whole nation of baseball fans recognized that. When the game became official in the fifth inning, Cal got a sobbing, screaming 22-minute Standing-O.
I happened to walk to my car with Johnny Apple, the legendary New York Times reporter. He said he had never seen a crowd of people meld into one, emotional, united human force like that except when Robert Kennedy addressed the Democratic National Convention in 1964 after his brother's assassination. Historians also clocked the ovation Kennedy received at 22 minutes.
The biggest number of all was 714 — Babe Ruth's home run record. When Aaron broke it, the only dark cloud was racism. But every true baseball fan respected Aaron — his ability, his stamina and his character. The Babe's record fell with honor, like Gehrig's, his teammate.
Aaron's record will fade without honor. Bonds cheated. It's simply an added sadness that Bonds truly is one of the greatest hitters in baseball history, even without steroids. Some say he's the best. That doesn't matter. Baseball fans know that. Bonds has been and will always be followed by boos. He is like all too many people in the public eye today.
Willie still sticks up for his godson. That's proper; it's personal and it's loyal. But Barry didn't play on the same level field as Willie, Hank, Cal, Joe and the Babe.
If you prefer e-mail to public comments, complaints or arguments, send them along to Against the Grain. We may occasionally publish some of the interesting (and civil) ones, sometimes in edited form.
Copyright 2009 CBS. All rights reserved. I have had one and only one hero in life: Willie Mays. Because of Willie, I have been a San Francisco Giants fan for as long as I can remember. So it pains me to see Barry Bonds, Willie's godson and a Giant, poised to steal and besmirch a proud piece of American history.
Baseball is the oldest purely American sport, with the richest and most measured history. Its records are milestones in history, big punctuation marks in the narrative kids grow up with and symbols of the times when the records were set.
When Bonds hits his 756th home run in June or July, he, too, will make his indelible mark on American history. Indeed, he is a rather perfect representative of our times and the spirit of both our sports and our leaders and celebrities. Bonds' record is ignoble and unfair to baseball history for the simplest of reasons: He cheated.
As a kid, I was a regular baseball fanatic. I memorized statistics, collected cards, pretended to be a pro when I played catch with my pal John Strauss and had a Willie Mays fan club in the storage room. I was a lousy player. There was nothing poetic or metaphysical about baseball to me, yet.
That changed somewhat in the summer of 1997 when I was producing a story about the 50th anniversary of Jackie Robinson's first game in the majors with correspondent Russ Mitchell. We were the first journalists to be given a look at the letters Robinson wrote to his wife all through his career, which were the basis of a new biography by Arnold Rampersad.
Russ and I went to interview Roger Wilkins, the historian, writer and civil rights intellectual. Wilkins grew up black in Grand Rapids, Mich., and listened devotedly to baseball on the radio. He was about 15 when Jackie Robinson broke the race barrier.
I will never forget listening to Wilkins talk about how as a teenager, the baseball diamond was the one place it seemed a black man could get an absolutely fair shake. Balls were balls, strikes were strikes and hits were hits. Even if an umpire blew or a call or a cracker hothead came into Robinson's second base with spikes up, the fans could see the truth.
Wilkins had probably done a couple thousand TV interviews in his life. But his gaze was vague and his eyes were moist as he talked about how the baseball field was, in his eyes, the only level playing field for black people in 1947.
To some degree, that's part of why most people like sports. Skill, tenacity and accomplishment win, fair and square — or they should. Not too many people will feel that way when Hank Aaron moves to second on the home run list.
When I was growing up, there were three great numbers in baseball: 56, 61 and 2,130. But the ultimate baseball number was 714.
Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak lasted for 56 remarkable games. No one thought that record would ever be broken, and still no one thinks it will be.
Roger Maris' record of 61 homers in '61 was astounding, too. But it fell, probably to steroids. Bonds now has that record, too.
Lou Gehrig's Iron Man record of 2,130 games was considered unassailable as well. Its nobility was sealed when he was stricken with ALS — known now as Lou Gehrig's Disease — but he told the crowd at Yankee Stadium that he was the "luckiest man on the face of the earth." I was at Camden Yards in Baltimore when Cal Ripken broke that record. Cal earned it, and did so with honor. A whole nation of baseball fans recognized that. When the game became official in the fifth inning, Cal got a sobbing, screaming 22-minute Standing-O.
I happened to walk to my car with Johnny Apple, the legendary New York Times reporter. He said he had never seen a crowd of people meld into one, emotional, united human force like that except when Robert Kennedy addressed the Democratic National Convention in 1964 after his brother's assassination. Historians also clocked the ovation Kennedy received at 22 minutes.
The biggest number of all was 714 — Babe Ruth's home run record. When Aaron broke it, the only dark cloud was racism. But every true baseball fan respected Aaron — his ability, his stamina and his character. The Babe's record fell with honor, like Gehrig's, his teammate.
Aaron's record will fade without honor. Bonds cheated. It's simply an added sadness that Bonds truly is one of the greatest hitters in baseball history, even without steroids. Some say he's the best. That doesn't matter. Baseball fans know that. Bonds has been and will always be followed by boos. He is like all too many people in the public eye today.
Willie still sticks up for his godson. That's proper; it's personal and it's loyal. But Barry didn't play on the same level field as Willie, Hank, Cal, Joe and the Babe.
If you prefer e-mail to public comments, complaints or arguments, send them along to Against the Grain. We may occasionally publish some of the interesting (and civil) ones, sometimes in edited form.
Posted by craymo2 at 08:13 AM : May 26, 2007
Just for the record craymo2, while Bonds was on the Pirates, he never hit more than 34 home runs. His highest single season batting average was .311. Those are good stats, maybe even great if you have low standards, but hardly "Greatest Player" territory! Nor are numbers like that very extraordinary for the time, either. Why do you think he started taking steroids!
As for your comments, ixoye_02, if you still don't think Bonds took steroids, I have some swamp land in Florida to sell you!
you stated that Bonds is just an "above average player"? Maybe you are the one who is on illegal drugs. All you have to do is check the stats dating back to Bonds' Pittsburgh days, and you will see why many analysts and former players see Bonds as the Greatest Player to play the game over Ruth, Cobb, Ripken, Musial, Aaron, and Mayes. So you guys may want to check the facts before you Bonds hater continue to bash this guy.
Have you ever been part of a highly competitive sports team at the national or international level?
If you were, you would realize that coaches, trainers and other players give you all sorts of things to make the pain go away and to make you perform better and what not. It could be creams, powders, liquids - all sorts of krap.
And, everybody takes it and the pressure to win is so high that no one thinks twice about it when in the gym.
That is probably what happened to Barry Bonds.
Or... may be not. May be he DID know he was doing steroids. The point is that people who know about this kind of environment cannot just disqualify what he said by saying "gimme a break". It could have happened the way he said it.
First, Bonds has never been FORMALLY charged with steroid use. He has never been suspended from games. He admits he may have unknowingly taken steroids. Some people say he may be lying but no one has pulled out the proverbial smoking gun.
Secondly, the times have changed. Steroid abuse is widespread in sports including the MLB and Bonds was not the ONLY person doing this (that is, if he was indeed doing this). His achievements have to be compared with his other steroid-taking contemporaries not with people in the past.
Players in any sport today have more scientific inventions and modern training aids available to them compared to the players in the past. If we go by ***'s logic, all achievements today are a result of cheating because players have better resources available to them compared to the players in the past.
I believe Bonds is the best among *his* contemporaries - many of whom were also probably taking steroids. So, let us never forget the old-time Greats, but at the same time, let us celebrate the creation of a new MLB record right in front of our eyes (while we are still alive).
At least, we can tell our gradkids we were there!
Bonds, like Fischer is pretty much, a ONE TRICK PONY, in the very real sense that each of these legends sacked much of the real treasure life offers in order to gain personal fame and fortune at something they can do well.
I believe Barry Bonds should be applauded, while at the same time eyed with a degree of sympathy. I believe that Mr. Bonds has made some unwise, even foolish choices, along the way.
Sadly he may well become the MLB'S new home run champion, but he's not much of an excuse for a human being.
If you want to call Bonds a cheater, that is your freedom. But I also want to make sure that we are not singling out a person and villifying that person without the definitive proof and evidence. And when that evidence is irrefutable, then we can all change our opinions. Too often our society is willing to villify a person without all of the facts. And once we have started to villify a person, the facts don't seem to matter anymore to anyone. I personally don't want to sit in judgement and let the mob decide what the facts are.