Ball 5

Author: Justin Golenbock

In their most recent magazine, ESPN decided to run their cover story on a spanking fresh topic in sports journalism: Barry Bonds.

Now, the presence of pop journalist Chuck Klosterman notwithstanding, I figured hey, worth a read. Without giving anything away, save the three minutes. In fact, after finishing this article, NEVER READ ANOTHER WORD ABOUT BARRY BONDS AGAIN.

Anyone who has been paying attention to mainstream sports journalism in the past, say, three years, shouldn't need that advice. For some reason Barry Bonds and steroid abuse have become synonymous, and, more importantly, have become the most publicized story in sports.

Let me lay out my own position: I believe definitively that Barry Bonds intentionally used performance enhancing drugs to become a better baseball player. I also think the same is true about a fair percentage of major-leaguers in the last decade, pitchers and hitters both, and that this percentage probably lies somewhere between the reported 5-7 percent of failed drug tests, and the bogusly enlarged 50+ percent hyperbole we've heard in the news.

But enough is enough. I'm sure that Barry Bonds is probably just as much of an asshole as has been reported - after all, enough people have said so by now, right? That, plus he broke a lot of records because he cheated, blah blah blah, save the children, yada yada, and there's your villain.

Yet are assholes, even record-breaking assholes, new in sports? In baseball? I'm pretty certain Barry Bonds is not a worse human being than was the great Ty Cobb, who filed his spikes and was an active member of the Klan, or the best second baseman in history, Rogers Hornsby, whose gambling and cantankerous personality had him traded six times. One of the most famous baseball cheaters of all-time, Shoeless Joe Jackson, has been apologized for in one of the most famous baseball movies of all-time.

But Bonds is different, because he's going to pass the great Babe Ruth in home runs. It's that fact that led Klosterman to de-claim the "emotional importance" of statistics, and declare that numbers, as any meaningful comparison between eras, are dead. But there's nothing emotional about the statistical record. Rob Neyer said it best when he was asked about the possibility of officially "asterixing" Bonds' records:The stats are the stats, and they're just the stats. What's the point?

And if you think Ruth's numbers are any less subjective than those of Bonds, then you are CRAZY (LOCO). The 1930s were an offensive era when Major League Baseball was devoid of diversity, there was no significant minor league system or comprehensive scouting and development process.Does that make his stats any less real? No, they're just stats, to be taken in their historical context like any other. Relax about the record books and you might just find that the game Bonds has so "polluted" is still around and going strong.