AJC > Sports > Columnists > Archives > 2007 > November > 15 > Entry
DEL.ICIO.USBonds indictment too late for baseball
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mark Bradley
Too late, baseball has its asterisk. Nearly four years after he testified before one grand jury, another grand jury has decided Barry Bonds lied. And somewhere Bud Selig is moaning, “Why couldn’t this have happened a year ago?”
Baseball kept waiting for this, waiting and praying an indictment would arrive before Bonds hit Nos. 755 and 756. That would have spared Selig from having to dither about how, or even if, to “celebrate” a record he obviously regarded as bogus. But baseball never gets lucky. As the baseball man Branch Rickey said, “Luck is the residue of design,” and Selig and his craven cronies lack all forethought. Baseball tried to have an outside body do its dirty work, and the trouble with independent contractors is that they hew to their schedule, not yours.
And now, the indictment finally on the books, the legal stuff is almost beside the point. The greater question: What will baseball do? Will it suspend Bonds? (Kind of an empty gesture, given that he’s between teams.) Will it excise his records? (All of them, or just those established after his head so conspicuously expanded?) Will it wait until the trial, assuming there is one, or will it be so desperate to distance itself from Bonds that it’s impelled to do something, anything?
From Page 3 of the indictment: “During the criminal investigation, evidence was obtained including positive tests for the presence of anabolic steroids and other performance-enhancing substances for Bonds.” If that’s so, why could baseball never uncover or gain access to such evidence? Why was Bonds allowed to keep hitting his home runs? Did baseball simply not know, or did it not want to know?
This much, and this much only, is clear: Bonds has hit his last home run. He’s 43, and he just played himself out of the one city that didn’t despise him. Even if baseball doesn’t suspend him, what team would want his baggage-laden services? (The general idea is to attract fans, not repel them.)
Bonds has always acted as if he wants nobody to like him, and almost nobody does. He became the home-run king only to find he had no subjects. He didn’t have to bulk up artificially to become a great player — he was great already. But Bonds, driven by disdain, grew too big both figuratively and literally.
Those willing to suspend their disbelief when Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa staged their match race never afforded Bonds the benefit of a single doubt. We all wanted to believe in McGwire and Sosa because they seemed like such nice guys, but the sneering Bonds didn’t pluck a single heartstring. He was always the Bad Guy, and now the Bad Guy is under federal indictment.
This all might seem tragic if it weren’t so utterly apt. Baseball and Bonds deserve one another. The sport that saw a strike wipe out a World Series is the realm of obscene greed. Everybody wants more — owners and players and agents and union chiefs and network executives. Nobody worries about the good of the game, the consequence being that there’s little good left.
Baseball didn’t care about steroids in the McGwire/Sosa summer of 1998 because attendance and ratings were soaring and everybody was getting ever richer. Baseball didn’t care until the sport and its precious numbers became distorted beyond the point of recognition, and by then it was too late. Bonds was bearing down on Hank Aaron and his sport lacked the guts to halt him. He got his record. He’ll probably have to give it back.
Last month the similarly disgraced Marion Jones returned the five medals she won at the 2000 Olympics. At least she got to keep her tainted bounty for seven years. Barry Bonds was indicted exactly 100 days after No. 756 cleared the fence at Pac Bell Park. For his blundering sport, it was 100 days too late.
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