Barry Bonds: Hero or Villain

Without question Barry Bonds is one of the best baseball players of all time. There is no debate on that subject. Before he is done he will hold every major home run record in the game. The question has been and always will be about Bonds is how he got there. Did he or didn't he use steroids. If you look at comparisons of his body when he was younger til now the difference is staggering. Now grant it we all get thicker as we get older. We also are supposed to slow down and lose ability when we get older. Barry seems to have gotten better with age when it comes to the sexiest stat in sports, the home run.

The question is do we cheer his accomplishments or are they tainted by the cloud of steroid use. He has never admitted publicly to using any type of performance enhancing drugs. There is no public record of a positive test that has been reported. Perhaps we will never know the full truth as it seems Barry has people who will continue to cover up and keep their mouth shut forever. Even willing to go to jail to protect him.

I do believe his records are tainted and should be only put in the books with an asterisk but not only because of steroids. The reason for that is I don't have a problem with the alleged steroid use. We as sports fans want to see stars do amazing things on the field or the court. We do not like to pay the price of an expensive ticket or TV sports package so we can watch the backups play. I feel it should be the choice of the athlete whether or not to take the risks of using enhancers. I like seeing 500 foot home runs. I like seeing world records shattered in track and field. I love to watch a running back take a 2 yard screen pass and break tackles to turn it into a 30 yard gain. I enjoy a great high flying dunk. I am obviously in the majority or else ESPN would not run highlights of these types of plays at least 400 times a day on their #1 watched show Sportscenter.

The pros and cons of steroids have been debated ad nauseum. Yes they work but how? Can they really give you better hand/eye coordination and better reflexes? I am no medical expert so I will not elaborate to much on this. I do however feel that steroids can help you recover from injuries faster. They obviously build muscle mass which makes you stronger. So if your stronger you can hit the ball farther seems like a logical conclusion. You first have to hit the ball which requires a fantastic amount of coordination which I am not convinced steroids will help. That my friends is called God given talent which Bonds has plenty to spare. He didn't come out of nowhere to be a great player. He was a great player in high school and college and well known by the time he came to the Pirates as a talented youngster destined for stardom. I do think the steroids have helped him stay on the field and play more games which has contributed to the mind blowing numbers he has put up over the last few years. This is what has separated him from some of the other players of the era. You can't hit homers from the dugout or the trainer's table.

Let's compare Bonds to one of his contemporaries, Ken Griffey Jr. who is also a hall of fame player and voted one of the 50 greatest of all time. He has put up staggering numbers but over the last few yeas has been slowed by injuries. He has never been implicated by anyone of using any type of performance enhancers. Not a rumor, whisper, or even mentioned in tell all books by ex-players. He was supposed to be the savior of the franchise when he came to Cincinnati. The local boy comes home to bring the home town team back to the top. His tenure in Cincy has been a huge disappointment due to a plethora of injuries. Is is far fetched to think that if Jr. was maybe using some of the cream and the clear he could have stayed on the field more? If so, he would no doubt been close to if not past some of the numbers that Bonds has put up over the last several years. He was on pace to obliterate every record in the book and had another talent Bonds could never claim no matter how many steroids he took, JR. was a hall of fame defensive player. Bonds has the throwing arm of an 8th grader. He couldn't throw out Sid Bream who is still rounding third as we speak. Griffey was spectacular in the field and at the plate in a way Bonds could not touch. Maybe if he had been able to partake of some of the stuff that was out there to help him get past some of his nagging injuries, he would have already blew past Aaron and baseball could have celebrated this properly.

Enough about that back to my point. I think as much as steroids have helped Bonds there are other factors more relevant to the situation that have allowed him to be at this point statistically.

1. The Great Shrinking Strike Zone - Remember when a strike was actually between the letters and the knees? I sure do but I don't think today's umpires do or care. It's roughly about the size of a postage stamp now. Pitchers have to groove one right down the middle to get a call. This allows hitters to get pitches to hit they would rarely see if the strike zone was called properly.

2. The Disappearance of the Inside Pitch - Players make so much money now they get chippy when a pitcher sends them a little chin music. "He is trying to take food off my table" they say. It is hard making it on 5 million a year in this new economy I guess. This is a baseball tradition going way way back. The pitcher's part of the plate was the inside half. If you crowded the plate you got planted on your backside or took a nasty bruise and first base. No batter likes it but it was understood that was part of the game. Not any more!! The era of the primadonna athlete with his large ego and over-sensitive personality have caused baseball to all but legislate the high hard one out of the game. If a pitchers so much has gets near a hitter they are glaring at the mound and asking the ump to make the bad pitcher stop he is scaring me. I was watching the Red Sox/ Yankee game when the Sox went back to back to back to back. I told my wife that in the old days that would never happen without someone getting knocked on their butt. You may hit one or two but by the time the third guy came up to the plate the pitcher would need to get control of the plate back. I was in Cleveland as a young man watching Nolan Ryan pitch for the Angels. I remember Buddy Bell hitting a home run off him in the 1st inning. My dad told me "I feel bad for the next guy, he is in trouble". Sure enough the next batter got one high and tight probably at about 110 mph. He got up, dusted himself off and got right back in his stance. Of course he struck out on the next 3 pitches and that was the only hit Cleveland got off Ryan that day. If that happened now there would be fines and suspensions. No fear of the inside pitch has allowed modern players to crowd the plate and dive in with no fear of getting hit. I believe this is part of the reason for the increase of home runs in the new kinder gentler era of MLB.

3. Body Armor -This is along the same vein as the last category. Players like Bonds and Garry Sheffield bring more padding to the field than Eric Dickerson. This allows the hitter to have no fear of the inside pitch. So lean in, dive in, step in all you want. If he comes inside to you it wont hurt little Doogie. It will bounce off like a melted snowball and you get to go to first base. There needs to be some ruling that limits the amount of armor you can wear on your arm while at bat. Helmets and all the catchers equipment are there for safety. I don't believe anyone has died by getting hit in the upper arm by a pitch.

4. Titleist Baseballs - The modern baseball is much harder than the old ones. I have 2 baseballs from the early 70's. When I compare them to the balls made now they feel like NERF balls. OK maybe that is exaggerating but you get the point. It's simple physics folks. The harder the ball the farther it goes when you hit it. Baseball can deny it all they want but it is the truth. I can not be convinced otherwise.

5. Smaller Stadiums -There are several of the new parks that the fences are so short they wouldn't have to put up a temporary one to play the Little League World Series. Baseball decided that we needed to bring fans back after the last strike. They decided that shortening the fences would increase runs which would make the game more exciting. You can't blame them because it worked. The summer of Sammy and Big Mac was so contrived that Vince McMahon would have been proud. I am surprised they haven't installed huge wind tunnel fans behind home plate at every park to give it the Wrigley Field effect.

It is obvious that performance enhancing drugs are used by all athletes in probably every sport from cycling to swimming to poker. Not sure how they help in poker but I imagine it has been tried. The bottom line is why is this such a problem? "It's my body I have a right to choose". We have heard this statement as an argument for other issues I don't understand why we can't have his attitude in sports. Isn't it much more fun for the Giant fans to have enjoyed watching Barry hit ball after ball into the water than Reds fans watch Jr. sit on the bench for most of the last 3 years?