Why I’m cheering for Barry Bonds
07Aug07
I’m wholeheartedly in favor of Barry Bonds.
Why?
- Bonds seems like an introverted guy who doesn’t get along with people, including reporters, and as a consequence gets bad press. In this he reminds me of the great Eddie Murray, who got the same kind of bad press and as a consequence was never as popular as he should have been. If I myself were a famous baseball player I think I’d be the type who liked schmoozing with reporters. But I love Eddie Murray, and as a kind of corollary I love Bonds.
- It’s fun to take contrarian points of view; the problem is, the contrarian point of view is typically contrarian because it’s stupid. But for Bonds, you can make a case. Did he use steroids? So did Manny Alexander, and he stayed Manny Alexander. Bonds, on the other hand, became the greatest hitter I and most other living people have ever seen. Baseball isn’t a pure athletic contest like weightlifting or cycling: not everyone believes that steroids even make you a better player. True, no one in the history of baseball has ever enjoyed a late-career renaissance like Bonds; but then again, there has never been a player much like Bonds. He’s unique, like Rickey Henderson — the kind of player who for a few years warps baseball around him and makes it a different game.
- But the best reason to love Bonds is the people who hate Bonds. They’re the people who think he didn’t deserve to break Aaron’s record, and who complain that he’s not a role model. Often they’re the people who think Ripken was great because he showed up to work every day. Those people think baseball is a metaphor for America, or the life well lived, or the agrarian past, or the ceaseless struggle between lunchpail Joes and pouty millionaires. But the great thing about baseball is that it’s not a metaphor for anything. It is what it is and stands only for itself. You don’t root for your team because they’re nice to their wives, or vote for the right candidates, or play the game in a way that suits your prejudices. You root for them because they’re your team and you care like hell whether they win or lose. Bonds is magnificent and it’s been a privilege to watch him play. But when he plays against the Orioles, I hope he goes 0-4. With an error.
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Great post.
I do root for the team that is nice to their wives, but then I have never been a serious sports fan. Even when it comes to Hockey, where I pay attention, it would really bother me if the Sabres misbehaved outside the rink. Fortunately hockey is still draws a small enough audience that even if they do I might not read about it.
Here’s the thing about how History will reward Barry Bonds: it’s likely that at least one current player will break his record. He’ll end up being to the career HR record what McGwire and Sosa are to the single-season HR record–a guy who held it briefly at the start of a period when it was broken a number of times in relatively short succession.
Griffey (pushing 600) and A-Rod (youngest to 500) are the obvious contenders. But by the time we entered a world in which Brady Anderson could hit 50 HRs, Bonds already had too much of his career in the books to set the record by an unbreakable margin.
Depending on how long he plays out the string (and how much his HR totals decline during those years), it’s conceivable that he could be surpassed before he becomes eligible for the Hall of Fame.
As a lifelong Orioles fan, big ups on the Eddie Murray analogy.