Ok, let’s talk about this. 
Barry Bonds has broken one of the greatest records in all of sports. And everyone has an opinion on it. What are you thinking out there?
Let’s discuss this while keeping a mind open to the possibility that we are thinking wrongly on the topic, regardless of our opinion. I’ll get things started with my opinion, and we’ll go from there.
I have little doubt that Bonds did not knowingly take some kind of human growth hormones. The increase in body mass he achieved, later in his life, astounds the physics of normal human development. At the same time, I believe that he is one of the best batters to ever play the game. David Zirin recounts in his book Welcome to the Terrordome a player’s account of standing next to Barry Bonds during pitching practice, calling out each type of pitch nearly as soon as it came out of the pitcher’s hand. The guy knew how to bat, and when you get down to the specifics of how much the steroids helped him accomplish (did it increase his overall home-run total by 20? 30? 50?), the fact remains that he is one of the best players in the long, storied history of baseball in America. He just, you know, doesn’t steal as many bases as he used to!
Am I giving Bonds a pass? Not really. I just think the outrage surrounding him stinks of our own self-righteousness. Commissioner Bud Selig makes it well known that he does not like Barry Bonds, and he probably thinks Bonds cheated. Yet, Selig presided over the MLB when, after the infamous baseball strike of 1994, home runs were used as a tool to regain the baseball faithful. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa both chased Roger Maris’ honored single-season home-run record while hopped up on human growth hormones. Good ol’ Sammy even added a legion of corked bats for good measure. New ball parks were built with shorter outfields, my beloved Cincinnati Reds now having the shortest outfield in the league, and correspondingly the most home-runs of all of the teams (which has helped their record tremendously, you see). And steroids use has been endemic in all of this home-run madness. The guys want to please the crowds by showing that they can hit the long ball (double entendres found there are not completely incidental). Why does this continue? Because the home-run record chase of 1998 brought the fans back. We came back. When we see home-runs, we flock to them like lemmings. The league responds, knowing their need to make a killing in order to overpay their stars. And when your expectations for big hits exceeds the natural expectations of normal human baseball players, you’ve then created a system where steroid use becomes a common means to a desired end.
So for me, Barry Bonds is important. I know that Bonds doesn’t like the press and comes off as pretty salty a lot of the time, but McGwire was not known for being a happy-go-lucky personality when it came to questions of illegal (or suspiciously legal) substances, either. But Barry Bonds reveals where we are, and where our beloved sport is today. It is a game ruled by massive corporations, which tend to be so risk-aversive that they just might be slow to respond to a problematic behavior among the players that, in actuality, leads to results that secures the return on their financial investments. If we don’t like Bonds, then we are casting doubt on the entire system that has become what is Major League Baseball. More importantly, I think that our disdain for Barry Bonds betrays and hides to ourselves our own complicity in the system that has created him.
Baseball is America’s sport, for better or for worse. If you want to know what is happening in our country today, this sport has to be part of the search for answers. And the answers we find in the person of Barry Bonds should, if not anything else, give us pause to reflect on ourselves and what we’ve allowed the sport to become.
Ok, baseball fans, unite! Let’s hear what you’ve got to say.
