King Barry

Someday, probably soon, San Francisco Giants left fielder Barry Bonds will hit his 756th career home run. This is not an implausible thought at all; he has, after all, already hit 754 of these, and barring a catastrophic injury involving (but not limited to) something on the level of the severing of his carotid artery, he will hit 2 more home runs.

There’s a lot of controversy about this, for some reason. A lot of this commotion is based on the speculation that Barry Bonds knowingly used illegal, steroid-based performance-enhancing substances. Did he definitively use these? He has admitted to unwittingly using a cream-based steroid, noting that he thought it was flaxseed oil. Aside from that, though, he’s admitted to nothing else. Circumstantial evidence – clubhouse rumors, speculation from authors ranging from the journalistically-credibly Jeff Perlman to the morally-shaky Jose Canseco, and the kind of visual evidence available to everybody (comparing pictures of a rookie-era Bonds to a current-day photo) – abounds.

I will say this: Barry Bonds probably used steroids.

You know what? That’s okay.

Well, it’s probably not okay on the grand scale of things. The long-term drawbacks of steroid use are only now becoming known, and the odds are high that their use will provide definitive ramifications for users, including the shrinking of testicles and potentially higher risk for cancer. Also, the use of steroids is a crime; Bonds testified that he’d never unwittingly used them, and if this proves him to be a liar, then he’s probably due for a stretch in prison.

However, between the foul lines, I don’t think that Barry Bonds was necessarily wrong. From all accounts, baseball, for the better part of the last two decades, has created an environment in which players were all but encouraged to use performance enhancers. (This was probably true in all major professional sports – we’re probably fifty years or two generations removed from culpability before we’ll see how widespread it was.) Baseball did not provide punishment for players using the steroids, and celebrated the achievements of players widely speculated to have been using such substances. The era of permissibility created a grey area of epic proportions; it was in this grey area that players like Bonds flourished.

As baseball fans, we have to come to terms with the steroid era. This is not a choice. We have to. This is not as easy as it sounds. It means taking your favorite players – for me, it’s any Yankee from the championship run between 1996 and 2000 – and coming to grips with the fact that they might have played dirty. Sure, a player like Curt Schilling might come out and say that he didn’t use steroids; however, unless we can see a lifetime of negative tests, then that player can not escape suspicion. It’s a sad but ultimately necessary designation that must accompany every single player from that era.

Ultimately, it’s no different from assuming that every major leaguer who lived as an adult through prohibition made it to a speakeasy, or that every major leaguer who could possibly partake of the amphetamines widely available in every clubhouse did. In those situations, the culture made it permissible. Would players have played the game better if they hadn’t been partaking of illegal alcohol, or would they have played the game worse if they hadn’t been hopped up on greenies? Possibly, and possibly. The answer, just like it is for steroids, is that we’ll never know.

Baseball should be all about celebrating the achievements that occur on the field. While we can never assume a lily-pure culture, we can look at what we do know: the numbers. Barry Bonds will hit his 756th home run, and it will be something special – because nobody in the colorful, storied, muddy history of Major League Baseball has ever done that before.

Now, will I (personally) cheer Barry Bonds? Probably not. If I’ve learned anything about Bonds from years of following his exploits from Pittsburgh to San Francisco, it’s that Bonds is a selfish, churly individual with the likeability quotient of a boot full of dog poo. There are definitely better people out there who could set the home run record. But that’s my opinion. If you feel differently and decide that you should cheer him, then, by all means, cheer him.

He’s been the best of his time, and with that in mind, he’s earned it. Records are made to be broken. The king is dead. Long live the king.

Granted, I think the king has no clothes, but again, that's my opinion.

Doesn't mean he's not the king.