Thinking About Barry Bonds

Barry Bonds is currently on trial for perjury stemming from allegations that he lied about taking steroids while under oath.

This is something that I could not give less of a shit about.

Which is odd, because when I think about how I felt about Bonds just a few years ago, this is a trial that I should be absolutely invested in. Yet here I am, merrily enjoying baseball’s opening weekend without giving a single thought to the Bonds trial. I haven’t read one article, blog post or news report on the trial--and I don’t think I’m alone.

The utter apathy with which people are treating the Bonds trial is a little startling when you consider just how violently the tide of public opinion was bearing down on him just a few short years ago. Everyone hated Barry, and everyone wanted to see Barry pay for tarnishing the game with each record setting, HGH fueled swing that he took.

I heard that every time Barry Bonds winks, Jesus Christ is

brought back to life and then immediately killed in a fire.

I was one of these people who wanted to see swift justice brought against the criminal that was Barry Bonds. To me Bonds went against everything that sports were supposed to give us. He wasn't an incredible athlete amazing us with displays of what the human body can accomplish. No, to me he was a cheater who was brazenly rising to the pinnacle of his sport. He was artifice where there should have been art.

I remember being a dip shit teenager and shouting incredibly dip shitty things at the TV as I watched Bonds inch closer to what seemed like every record that ever existed. “Guuhhhhh Barry I hate you! I hope you get sucked up into your own butthole and DIE, YOU CHEATER!”

So why is my former hatred only matched in its breadth by my current apathy? Why am I not ecstatic that the man who I blamed for ruining baseball and marring the record books is now facing serious jail time?

I’d like to think that I feel this way now because I have become so desensitized to the “Steriod Era” by the cavalcade of superstars that have been revealed as users over the last ten years. This explanation would make sense after all, it would be very easy for me to say, “Oh well now that I know that everyone was doing steroids back then, I guess Barry Bonds isn’t quite so evil.”

But that explanation is bullshit, really. Even as a kid I was nowhere near naïve enough to believe that Bonds was the only one taking steroids, and that hulking monsters like Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Manny Ramirez, and David Ortiz were clean. Deep down I knew that that entire era was riddled with players who were on steroids. How could I not know?

The truth is that I fostered my hatred for Barry Bonds simply because he was perfectly suited to play the role of the villain in the baseball narrative that I so desperately wanted to conceive.

“Barry Bonds is a surly, cocky bastard who wears an earring and is mean to reporters and his teammates! Of course he would cheat. Not any of those other guys though, because they are just really solid dudes and solid dudes don't cheat, you know?”

Yeah, no way this guy did steroids.

I wanted so desperately to believe that this notion was true, so I made it true, and all the tumblers of my baseball fantasy world clicked elegantly into place. The nasty motherfucker who I never liked anyway was an evil cheater and all the other guys who I liked weren’t. It was so simple and clean, and I know a lot of other people performed these same mental gymnastics. It wasn’t until the truth about the ubiquity of steroids was shoved into our faces that we were able to let go of the “Barry Bonds as the Devil” image.

I think it’s important to consider our treatment of Bonds because he stands as a perfect example of our ability as sports fans to completely delude ourselves in the name of our own prejudices and biases. We jump at every chance we get to mark one guy as a villain and crown another as a hero, even when logic compels us to do the opposite. This tendency is incredibly fucking dumb and needs to stop.

So the next time you want to turn someone into the Attila the Hun of whatever sport it is that you follow, take a minute to think about whether or not you are doing so because you are being reasonable and nuanced, or just because you think the guy is kind of a dicknose.

E-mail the author of this post at leyt345 at gmail dot com.