It's Gonna Take More Than An *

I am not now, nor have I ever been, nor can I ever forsee a time that I would be, a fan of Barry Bonds. He is a disgrace to his team, to the sport of baseball and to his godfather, the great Willie Mays. Maybe someone should tell him that there is a difference between confidence and cockiness, between assured and arrogance, between hubris and humility and between the truth and a lie.
Roger Maris was saddled with an asterisk next to his single season home run record for YEARS based on the fact that the season was longer than when Ruth established the record, but Bonds is asterisk free? Of course, Bonds doesn't deserve the record at all. And his creeping up on the record set by Hank Aaron makes my stomach turn. Aaron played the game with grace and dignity. He faced the rage of racists and death threats in his pursuit of the all time home run record. And he did it without steroids. He EARNED the record based on his merits, on his talent.
Bonds claims that while he may have taken or used certain products he didn't know that they contained any sort of performance enhancers (pause here while I check my drivers license just to make sure that I wasn't born yesterday). Even if I suspended every thinking, reasoning part of myself and was willing to believe that he didn't really know that what he used contained steriods, it doesn't really change the bottom line: all of his records are suspect and should be stripped from him. I love baseball and I hate what Bonds and any other players like him are doing to the once noble, all-American sport.
And as for Russ Springer plunking Bonds rather than giving him the opportunity to hit a home run off of him? Well, if I had that kind of money, I'd gladly pay his fines for him! And given the standing ovation the crowd gave him, they probably could have raised the money last night!