Barry Bonds

Barry Bonds is a jerk. Everyone knows that. Barry Bonds has put up the best statistics of all-time due the performance enhancing drugs. Everyone knows that too.

Blackwater opened fire and killed innocent human beings, and it's not really a big deal here in the States for some reason. Barry Bonds lied about doing drugs, which I'm sure we've all done at some point or another, unless you've never done drugs ever, in which case you're probably a pleasure to be around.

Unfortunately, for Barry, he lied in front of the GJ, and unless you are President of the United States, lying in a Court of Law is going to get you in trouble, and it should.

People now want all his records not just "asterisked", but completely removed from the record books. Those people, are pretty dim, and here's why.

Last time I checked, it's the Steroid Era of baseball, a time line that people say begins after the strike of 1994 and continued unchecked until about 2003 or so. Personally, I bet it started way before that. I bet it started sometime around the time Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco started belting out homers for the A's in the late 80s. Mark McGwire. He was a smart man to retire before the needles fell out of the proverbial locker in the press room. Despite the fact he'll always be shunned and most likely never make the Hall of Fame, compared to what Barry Bonds has to go through, he's getting off easy.

Let's say we do retract his records, and aside from the whole "that's erasing history, which is never a good idea" thing, it being a Steroid ERA, we'd have to retract much more than the numbers Bonds put up between 1998 until present. MVP's; Cy Youngs; All-Time Greatest Teams Articles written by Tom Verducci; World Series Championships ... everything would have to go. That's why people like me, defend Barry Bonds despite the true awfulness of a person he is.

We don't like Barry Bonds, we defend him because he isn't the Anti-Christ. He didn't invent steroids. He didn't make what's looking more and more like 60% of baseball players use them (the number I believe Canseco and Caminiti often use). He was the best player in the game before them, then all of these people like Luis Gonzalez started belting out home runs right and left, and he joined the crowd. Naturally, his numbers became very ... well, unnatural. He basically cheated the best in an era of cheaters, so screw all the people who cheated and still weren't good, let's get the good one who's a jerk. Oh, and he's black by the way. That never helps.

If we keep his records, we don't have to respect them, and maybe he and McGwire do belong in the Hall of Fame, a very special section, so this era is never forgotten. The Steroid Cheat wing. In the regular Hall, you could have "thin on the Pirates Bonds" and in the Steroid Cheat wing, you have "big headed Giants Bonds." He doesn't need to be compared with Ruth and Aaron (despite the fact that he was a far superior athlete without steroids).

We're never going to know when the era started, all the players involved or anything like that. The Mitchell Investigation is a complete joke. I'm sure not one single Red Sox player will be linked because former Sen. George Mitchell is part of the investigation, so that's not going to help. And seriously, as much as I despise everything about Red Sox Nation, if I found out Big Papi was a juicer, I'd be devastated too. He's one of the good guys, damn, even ManRam, whom I've hated in the past, I get now, and I don't wanna know he did steroids. (His "it's not the end of the world" comments were the momentum shift that team needed to overcome the Indians).

Fortunately, the Mitchell Investigation will probably merely give us a percentage, and some keen insight such as "Players did steroids in the 90s", or maybe even "Mark McGwire did steroids" or something like that. Even if it did give us a list of names, what would that change? You can put queer little marks near them, you can choose to ignore them personally, but you can't erase them. In short, we're stuck with Barry Bonds, and worse yet, our only true hope for a remedy is to cheer on non-Steroid proven user, Alex Rodriguez to beat it. (I'm disappointed he re-signed with the Yanks by the way, they were almost likable again. I'm Pro-Girardi though, I think that was the right hire. Now it's just a question of who they give up for Johan Santana).

What disappoints me the most I guess, is that I believe we did get to see one of the best players ever play the game in the early 90s, and due to his own doing, his legacy will rightfully forever be tainted. That's punishment enough. If we start erasing history, it's bound to be forgotten (man, that last line had a little Rick Reillyness to it, sorry about that).