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Barry Bad for Baseball?
It's been theorized that Barry's little pity-party that he threw for himself, his prop of a son, and select members of the press was merely another one of his patented "you’ll miss me when I’m gone" ploys. Which we will but that's neither here nor there right now. What is here and there right now is the fact that while the ploy has worked in the past, the answer this time just might be no. And not only no, but don't let the door hit you on the way out. In other words, the question being bandied about now isn’t when Bonds will return but should he.
The question is being discussed in the MSM, the internets, and the shouting yak-fest shows on ESPN. A recent poll on ESPN.com showed that not only do people want him to retire, but think he's bad for baseball too. Columnists are writing that all this retirement talk is making Bud Selig do a happy dance of joy and that he's busy sticking pins in his Barry Bonds bobble-head voodoo doll. There is even some discussion out there about what would happen if instead of the schlubily hapless Fredo that is Bud Selig, the savvy David Stern ran baseball and whether he'd engineer the same sort of "retirement" that he "engineered" for Michael Jordan. Even some Giants' bloggers are beginning to think it. Then, on Friday, the Chron's Bruce Jenkins chimed in and wrote that Bonds should stick it out this season, pass Ruth on the home run list, then retire at the end of the season. How bad has it gotten for Barry these days? Last week, one of the snarking heads on VH-1’s "Best Week Ever" responded to Barry's pained pleas by simply giving him the finger.
The reason for all the chattering isn't just because Barry is the best ballplayer maybe ever, but because he is about to embark on a quest for maybe the most sainted record in all of sports- Henry Aaron's 755 career home runs. Even die-hard Giants fans have to admit that with everything else going on, and we’re not just talking the steroid issue but possible perjury charges and tax-evasion charges too, that the chase for the record is a five-car pileup on the 101 about to happen. It's one of the most famous records in sports, one held by a universally beloved and respected figure, and it's about to be possibly usurped by a man pinned with a Scarlet S on his jersey and the Feds on his trail. No good can come out of it. Can baseball really celebrate him? Will ESPN? Will anyone? The home run chase has all the potential of being the anti-chase, the ultimate PR nightmare. After all, people like their pursuit of a record, especially a baseball one, to be some sort of Arthurian quest in which only the worthiest of heroes are able to lay claim. Barry is way more Mordred than Galahad in the eyes of the public. To most people, Bonds taking the home run record from Aaron is the metaphoric equivalent of Barry walking into the Hall of Fame and taking a big, huge dump.
Just having Bonds out there, chasing the record is seen as bad for baseball. The entire sport has adapted McGwire’s "I don’t want to talk about the past" mantra and can't change the subject fast enough. Having Bonds, the man who in most minds symbolizes steroids, still out there and hitting them into the Cove, is a huge reminder of the exact thing they're trying not to talk about. Talk about being in someone's grill. You know all those times when somebody is trying to take a nice portrait of somebody and there's somebody in the background trying to make faces and ruin it for everyone? To baseball, that's Bonds- the kid giving devil horns to grandma in the family picture.
Of course, all of this maybe a moot point anyways. Bonds' knees are pretty thrashed, even before the recent surgery, and knees have been done in many an aging superstar. What Bonds should do and how he should do it just might not be up to Bonds. In which case, tragedy or karma's bitchitude, will be up to history to decide.