Barry Bonds, David Ortiz and Access as a Two-Way Street

David Ortiz has dealt with his fair share of difficult media members. (via Martyna Borkowski)

David Ortiz has dealt with his fair share of difficult media members. (via Martyna Borkowski)

Access in the sports journalism and broadcasting context goes two ways. There’s the obvious one: Reporters need access to the players, and they can only get that through the teams. We tend to think less about the converse relationship. Players have their own desire to get their messages out to fans and the general public, and for years, the only way for them to do so was through the journalists.

For some players, this works fine. Athletes like Derek Jeter, Michael Jordan, Peyton Manning and others deftly navigated the media and used it to help build their gigantic brands. For others, it swiftly created a negative reputation that was impossible to escape. Consider the case of Dick Allen. Allen was considered lazy and aloof by the Philadelphia media, and this reputation followed him to Chicago in 1972. Dave Nightingale of the Chicago Daily News profiled Allen in Baseball Digest that year. The profile begins, “Richard Anthony Allen wasn’t wearing his horns.” Why the assumption Allen was the devil? Nightingale writes:

In some ports of call, for instance, his name is anathema. (“Don’t trust a word the SOB says … He’s an inveterate liar,” a Philadelphia writer pleaded.)

Word spreads fast among colleagues. As such, Allen rarely was able to present his side of the story. Nightingale’s profile indeed was one of the few to present, as the article’s title put it, “The Human Side of Richie Allen,” no doubt partly because Allen was putting together an MVP season for the 1972 White Sox at the time. The full story of his life, career, and the racism he faced as a minor leaguer in Arkansas in the early 1960s and as a Philadelphia Phillies star didn’t come out until Allen published his autobiography, Crash, in 1989, 12 years after his retirement from baseball.

This, to me, is the most fascinating potential of Jeter’s post-retirement journalistic venture, The Players’ Tribune. Many players have already used the website to post their own version of stories left incomplete by credentialed media outlets. One example is Larry Sanders of the Milwaukee Bucks, who revealed his reason that a lengthy absence from the basketball court was to seek help for an anxiety disorder that has dogged him for much of his life. This story was absent from the reporting leading up to the Bucks’ buyout of Sanders, with many thinking he simply didn’t want to play basketball any more. The Players’ Tribune gave Sanders a way to tell his side of the story to the fans without the filter of team-centric sports media.

David Ortiz showed the power of The Players’ Tribune last month in an energized piece March 26 titled “The Dirt,” in which Ortiz finally clapped back at those in the baseball media who have continued to hound him over his rumored connection to performance enhancing drugs. Ortiz detailed the depth of MLB’s testing and the betrayal that was MLB’s leak of confidential 2003 survey test results. But in my eyes, the biggest reveal came in discussing the assumptions made despite the lack of a positive test from Ortiz since MLB actually made performance enhancers against the rules in 2005:

In 2013, I came off the DL and started hot. My first 20 games I was hitting like .400. And the reporter with the red jheri curl from The Boston Globe comes into the locker room says, “You’re from the Dominican. You’re older. You fit the profile of a steroid user. Don’t you think you’re a prime suspect?”

He’s saying this with a straight face. I had taken like 70 at-bats. Anybody can get hot and hit .400 with 70 at-bats. I was stunned. I’m like, I’m Dominican? I fit the profile? Are you kidding me?

Ortiz provides a fascinating perspective on just how steroid rumors can work within the baseball community. Establishment baseball media was embarrassed by missing the steroid issue in the 1990s, and some writers, like Dan Shaughnessy — who is the writer Ortiz referenced — have responded with swift skepticism towards wide swaths of players. Shaughnessy admitted to asking those questions in his rebuttal column, and it is revealing that he finds no issue in using Ortiz’s ethnicity as evidence of steroid use.

Barry Bonds has to be wondering what could have been had such an outlet been available for him in his prime. It’s difficult to find an athlete who has managed to re-brand himself better in the post-social media world than Bonds, who has gone from PED pariah to your Google Glass-wearing pal. In his post-retirement life, we have seen a much kinder, gentler Bonds than the one known for getting in swearing matches with Jim Leyland and engaging in open war with the baseball press.

Things have softened enough for the Giants to invite Bonds to spring training, and recent news suggests the Giants are looking to make Bonds a more permanent member of the organization. “There’s definitely a desire to do something a little more than just coming down to spring training,” Giants president Larry Baer told the San Francisco Chronicle in March. “Noted players have contributed to the franchise. We’re trying to make him consistent with his godfather and others,” Baer said, referring, of course, to Willie Mays.

Time is a wonderful healer, and many in San Francisco never wavered in their support for Bonds in the first place, but it’s still striking that Bonds may find his way back into organized baseball so quickly. We are less than a decade away from widespread rumors of collusion to keep Bonds out of the league after his final year with the Giants in 2007, when he hit .276/.480/.565 and could have earned a spot in any American League lineup as a designated hitter. And we’re less than a decade from a time when the consensus on Bonds was more or less how Chuck Klosterman saw it in a 2006 column for ESPN’s Page 2:

Bonds is a self-absorbed, unlikable person who has an adversarial relationship with the world at large, and he has (almost certainly) used unethical, unnatural means to accomplish feats that actively hurt baseball. His statistical destruction of Ruth is metaphoric, but not in a good way. It’s an indictment of modernity, even for people who don’t give a damn about the past or the present.

It’s not that Bonds’ negative reputation was unearned. He was regularly short and outright mean with journalists well before steroids were on the radar. He had a reputation of arrogance with fans and didn’t particularly care to please them. In a 2001 column for Page 2 titled “Why America will never love Barry Bonds,” David Halberstam wrote that Bonds “has a rare capacity to take something that should be pleasant—playing a big-time sport at a supreme level—and to make it unpleasant.” And Halberstam wrote that Bonds, like Allen, was the subject of many a writer’s warning to a colleague.

A Hardball Times Update
Goodbye for now.

Thus, much of the baseball world was ready to pounce in 2005 as Congress’ steroids crackdown and Jose Canseco’s Juiced release finally made the issue unavoidable. One February press conference remains the most memorable. “All you guys lied. Should you have asterisks besides your name?” an exasperated Bonds asked reporters. “All of you lied. All of you said something wrong. All of you have dirt, all of you. When your closet is clean, then come clean somebody else’s.”

As with Ortiz now, those who then believed Bonds to be an irredeemable juicer were not going to be convinced otherwise no matter how nice he played. But particularly from then on, every time Bonds walked into a room, the story was steroids, and every question was framed with the assumption that Bonds was guilty. Bonds was guilty, of course, but so were hundreds of players across the league. Bonds was the one they were trying to destroy.

In 2001, before Halberstam’s Page 2 column, Bonds conducted an interview with Alan Schwarz of The New York Times. Schwarz noted, with one of the understatements of the new millennium, “Plying your trade in the public eye has never been one of your favorite things,” to which Bonds replied:

I like what I do as far as the game. But I don’t like a crowd of people around. I just don’t feel comfortable. I don’t know if I get nervous, or if I feel choked or whatnot. It’s scary. It’s not a really good feeling.

What Bonds describes here sounds very similar to the social anxiety suffered by contemporary athletes like Zack Greinke and Marshawn Lynch. “The thing that I was always worried about was that went I went home in the offseason I didn’t want to be followed around everywhere I go,” Greinke told SBNation blog True Blue LA in 2013. ”When it’s all you ever knew, it seems normal I guess.”

Sensitivity to anxiety within sports media, mainstream or not, is a relatively new concept, and it isn’t hard to see how anxiety could have fed into Bonds’ strained relationship with reporters. Bonds gets short with reporters because of anxiety, the media get angry and label him a troublemaker, which makes Bonds even more anxious about the media process, and on and on. Bonds’ relationship with the press was doomed from the start. Throw in the catalysts of big money—Bonds’s $43.75 million free agent contract with San Francisco was a record when he signed it in 1993—and steroids, and it is clear a powerfully negative reaction was only a matter of time.

Given Bonds’ reputation, we know there weren’t many media members in his corner. The few who may have been sympathetic to Bonds were always going to face a tough time. Because while writers, broadcasters, and even media organizations do not necessarily have agendas, the leagues who make their access possible certainly do. They want to advertise. They want to look good. They want to be something the American family can be proud of, something their children can believe in. And they have to do this through their players, something a dominant but abrasive athlete like Bonds makes extremely difficult.

A decade ago, as BALCO blew up and Bonds’ reputation sank further, the sports media landscape was just beginning the widespread change that has brought — among many other things — The Players’ Tribune. Blogs and the internet were, however slowly, starting to show what sports outlets could do when they weren’t tied to the leagues for access, for money, for stories, and for their very existence.

But for Bonds, the only outlet was the same reporters who showed up in the clubhouse every day, many of whom may have been holding grudges from a blown-off media assignment years ago or simply stewing on the stories spread by the rest of their media brethren. Given the attitudes on both sides of the microphones at Bonds’ press conference, there was little chance the coverage would ever be anything but adversarial. Which is fine. But when the battles are waged at press conferences and summarized in the sports pages, we’re only getting one side.

An outlet like The Players’ Tribune wouldn’t have changed things immediately. But it would have been a unique opportunity to see the unfiltered Bonds. It would have been an opportunity to hear Bonds’ thoughts without them first being framed by an adversarial press corps. Make no mistake, they would get their chances. Dan Shaughnessy issued his rebuttal in the Boston Globe shortly after Ortiz’s piece went live, claiming pieces of Ortiz’s story don’t add up. Clearly, as Ortiz himself admitted, some people always will see him as a cheater. But “The Dirt” was notable if only for one reason: It was not the baseball media or leaked test results but Ortiz himself who opened and directed the debate.

You don’t have to believe Ortiz. And you wouldn’t have had to believe Bonds. But reading “The Dirt” on The Players’ Tribune, I came to realize our stories from the steroid era are woefully incomplete. Largely, we only saw one side of the story. And even if there isn’t a single thing Barry Bonds could say to make you believe he isn’t bad, mean, or straight-up evil, I feel certain he at least would have said something that would have made all of us think about it—and him—a little bit differently.


Jack Moore's work can be seen at VICE Sports and anywhere else you're willing to pay him to write. Buy his e-book.
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tz
8 years ago

Note to SABR: This article must be a nominee for your 2015 awards.

An absolute must read.

tz
8 years ago
Reply to  tz

*and a nomination to David Ortiz for nickname of the year (Dan Shaughnessy = Mr. Red Jheri Curl)

Wildcard09
8 years ago
Reply to  tz

Yeah immediately upon reading that I knew he was talking about Dan, that guy’s such a clown.

hopbitters
8 years ago

I think Carl Everett (another media darling) already won the lifetime achievement award for nicknaming Danny Boy.

Richie
8 years ago

The mainstream media did all it legally could during the steroid era. I mean, I knew steroids were rampant at the time, and how else could I have known?

Richie
8 years ago
Reply to  Richie

I remember when Rick Reilly basically outed Sosa by daring him to voluntarily take a steroid test, and just about all the sabre folks screamed epithets at Reilly for doing so. When Bonds first came under suspicion after his massive muscle gain, it was again the sabre folks who yelled ‘how dare people accuse Bonds?!?’ in response to the mainstream media pointing out the obvious.

adam
8 years ago

Excellent, excellent read. Important for any “fan”. Will be sharing this on my Fb. This is true moderate journalism, taking no real side and forcing the world to stop these extreme views.

Joe
8 years ago

Why is bonds hated so badly and A-Rod is cheered and welcomed back. Bonds was completely shut of out the game the only reason being he had done what everyone else had done during the steriod era. He could’ve almost certainly made it to 800 especially if they had shipped him to a homer friendly AL park. I feel terribly that the greatest hitter I have ever seen has been treated this way and A-Rod has the right to continue. I truly hope that bonds is inducted to the baseball hall of fame. Yeah he used steroids just like everyone else and he was so much better than everyone else too. We will never know what players of this era used and did not use. If you aren’t going to vote bonds in then everyone else from the PED era has to go too.

kyle
8 years ago
Reply to  Joe

I don’t understand how you can keep BB out of the hall. They elected Randy Johnson, Pedro Martinez, John Smoltz, and Craig Biggio. Can any of the voters BE 100% POSITIVE any of those guys NEVER ONCE used a PED. That answer is NO!!!

Joe
8 years ago
Reply to  kyle

I think BB is so hated the same way Rose was… He just won’t tell us what he did… People hate not knowing.. If he would just release a book or give an interview and divulge everything it might help his cause. Then a little time might mend the fence. I will forever remember BB as the greatest hitter of my generation. For 5 yrs straight BB hit 45+ HRs with 1 yr hitting 73. Not to mention before steroids he was a 3 time MVP. BB would’ve made the hall without them.

pbmax
8 years ago
Reply to  kyle

Not sure I’d compare Rose and Bonds’ situations. Rose did bet on baseball. That he won’t admit to betting on/against his own team is his issue. Even if he did he wouldn’t be let back in.

Why does Bonds have to say anything? He was one of the best players ever. He doesn’t owe anyone an explanation. Like Kyle said above about the others that have been elected. Why do we believe they didn’t cheat. Why won’t they be honest?

Bonds should be a unanimous HOFer.

Red Sox fan Ron
8 years ago

Never liked ortiz. Thinks there should be two sets of rules. One for the other players and a different one for him. Look at his antics when an ump calls a strike on him…even before Sundays game vs. the orioles.
Ortiz’s credo; ‘Win if you can, lose if you must, but always cheat’.

Paul G.
8 years ago

Jesse Ventura approves. (That’s not necessarily a good thing.)

Paul G.
8 years ago

So sports journalists are biased? While I do appreciate you bringing this subject to the fore as it is a lesson that needs to be repeated as often as possible, this is not exactly a surprise. All journalists are biased. You find this in every section of the newspaper reflected in a myriad of ways from unconscious prejudice to blatant lying. These sports writers are better than most in that they don’t even try to hide it, which allows the proper discounting of their opinions. It’s the phony ones that claim to be impartial when they are anything but who are the worst of the bunch. Sadly, biased journalism is the norm for most if not all of the history of the press.

As to Barry Bonds, if he does have social anxiety that would make him somewhat more sympathetic, but the dude is still one of the biggest cheaters in baseball history. Of course he would be the main target for the journalists to destroy. He should be destroyed. This isn’t someone who has unpopular opinions or makes a nuisance of himself off the field, a target for journalists to crush in the name of their own superiority and moral posturing. Bonds was the primary villain in a matter that defrauded his own profession. This is exactly the sort of player that should be targeted. For once the bias and the proper thing to do aligned quite nicely.

Joe
8 years ago
Reply to  Paul G.

BB didn’t defraud the game he just wanted to be better. What he did was the norm of that era and it wasn’t just baseball steriods were everywhere look at any sport. I bet you find a name. From tony mandritch to lance armstrong. Look at tiger woods he gained massive muscle no body ever ?? him. No body ever picks on mark mcgwire or andy petite neither were half the player bonds was. I look at ryan braun and A-rod at defrauding the game more than bonds did. At least when they started they knew it was wrong and they did it anyway. When bonds started its just what everybody did.

Paul G.
8 years ago
Reply to  Joe

Defrauding the game and wanting to be better are not mutually exclusive. And, yes, I agree that there was lots of steroids going on and it was terrible. It is wonderful that the sports culture has changed and no longer tolerates it. If anything the hammer should be brought down harder.

People pick on Mark McGwire all the time and I believe, technically, what he was doing was not illegal. There’s a reason he’s not in the Hall of Fame yet. Roger Clemens has become persona non grata. Alex Rodriguez is mostly despised. Did Barry get the worst of it? Probably. But then again he used chemicals to take ownership of two of the most cherished sports records and 4 straight MVPs. He was the second coming of Babe Ruth. When you make yourself larger than life, you make yourself the greatest baseball player of several generations, you get a larger than life fall from grace. He earned it.

(As to your other examples Andy Pettitte is more likable, given that he claims the HGH was to recover from injury. If true, that’s a much more sympathetic case. Whether you buy that excuse or not is up to you. Tony Mandarich is generally left alone because, well, he wasn’t very good. Other than being a draft bust he was a non-entity. Most people don’t waste the effort on such things.)

Lance Armstrong wishes he was treated as nicely as Barry Bonds. Talk about getting destroyed….

pbmax
8 years ago
Reply to  Paul G.

Bonds the biggest cheater? C’mon man, I can’t believe people still go with this. As a baseball fan who grew up during the steroid era I can’t fathom how one can take such a harsh view on one player when everyone knew what was going on, and so many were using. I guess the media that didn’t like Bonds did their job in making fans such as you hate him.

Destroyed? Hardly…and the article says in less than 10 years Bonds has already been to the last couple Spring Trainings and is looking to join the team in some capacity. He wasn’t destroyed, he just wasn’t allowed to keep playing the game he was best at. Which was every baseball fan’s loss sadly.

Marc Schneider
8 years ago
Reply to  pbmax

As great as Bonds was, he took all the joy out of it for me. I was glad he left. He was a complete asshole and it was not just in a baseball context. Maybe he is not a people person but it should be obvious that Bonds is simply rehabilitating his image to further his own self-interest. I have no objection to him being back in the game-and I think he should be in the Hall-but I cannot celebrate him no matter what.

pft
8 years ago

In Ortiz own book he admitted steroids were so prevalent in the DR he could have taken them by accident. In Biogenesis 12 of the 13 players were from south of the border. The steroid era began with the Latino influx in the 90’s, not that players north of the border were not using. Lax laws on steroid availability south of the border make this an inconvenient truth.

Papi also called his father a wife beater although he tried to back off of that after his article was published. Beware self publishing as you have no way to deny the story by saying you were misquoted

Michael Bravard
8 years ago

Bud Selig and Donald Fehr did baseball a huge disservice by not falling on their swords and taking the blame. Everything that happened before the release of Canseco’s book should have been downplayed.
The baseball media has its darlings.
No one would ever accuse Cal Ripken or Tony Gwynn of getting awfully “big”.
Selig and Fehr should have been concerned with Basbeall’s product but they instead deflected the blame that they should have embraced.
Worse than MLB players doing steroids is the blatant unfairness of accusing the few for what the masses did.

HGH and Testosterone are hormones naturally produced by the body. There are are safe and reliable ways to increase the natural production of those hormones. Baseball should spend more time actively promoting those methods instead of assigning blame to a few obvious PED transgressors.
Creating Scapegoats to shield your own mistakes is cowardice.

Marc Schneider
8 years ago

I’m sympathetic, certainly, to people with anxiety disorder, but I have a hard time understanding why someone that hates crowds would choose to be a professional athlete. Last time I heard, that’s sort of the point. I understand that people love playing the game, but if you hate blood, don’t be a doctor. It’s probably a good idea for the players to have a forum but I think you are more than a bit naïve if you don’t think it’s going to become a way for players to avoid dealing with hard questions. Just as politicians now speak only to friendly crowds that won’t question them, I can see athletes using this forum to avoid addressing issues in a way that makes them uncomfortable. And this is not to blindly defend sports journalists, many of whom are complete nitwits.

rubesandbabes
8 years ago

The ‘problem’ with the article is the same as all the others – another person outside baseball trying to front/make it okay/make excuses for Barry Bonds, who did admit highly programmed use of the most sophisticated PED regimen since East Germany, but who is also not speaking for himself.

“I’d like to thank my legal team..” – Barry Bonds 4/22/15

David Ortiz is a baseball player who has made millions on PEDs and has no more cred with any of his statements than Lance Armstrong eventually did. Perhaps I’ll take the author’s nice link and read Ortiz’ column, for laughs, but regarding Big Papi, it is just so obvious.

The great Big Papi hit first 30 home run year at age 27?? Very late in the baseball player age curve to get going on the home runs – probably compares to Jeff Kent, but very few others. It doesn’t look good.

(You don’t buy it? Take a look at the careers of every power hitter ever with 400HRs+, and then try to find some other player who didn’t hit 30 until age 27? And then look again – for most of these elite guys, at what age did they start to hit 30HRs? Answer: Younger than 27.)

Tony Bosch: “A-Rod was tested 12 times.”

David Ortiz: “I’ve been tested HUNDREDS of times.”

The present PED testing plan tests the athletes two times per year, once in spring training, and then once during the year. The World Champions had more than two key players have huge upticks in performance late in the year – they were a horrible team during the Summer.

It sucks to have to mention this, but maybe the performance uptick is related to the passing of the second test, and then freedom to dope?

A-Rod was managing his doping down to the hour of the day (for tests that never were administered). With millions of dollars on the line, getting past the second test is go time for these guys…it’s happening.

ps. To the St. Louis outfielder: Throughout the history of the game, there have been these beautiful second half of the season performers. Sorry, I would like to include you in this category, but no…

Marc Schneidere
8 years ago
Reply to  rubesandbabes

It’s now gotten to the point where anytime a player does something out-of-the-ordinary, people suspect (or assume) that it’s PED-related. Is this the way that it’s going to be from now on, that the only people who aren’t suspect are the average players or players that never deviate from career norms? From the standpoint of enjoying the game, I can’t see the point of taking that attitude. Is this the way you watch baseball now?

I’m certainly no great fan of Bonds and I think Ortiz is a bit of a phony, but, for god’s sake, are we really going to discount everything they have done because of PEDs? I am sure I could go back and find a number of players who had upticks later in their careers.

rubesandbabes
8 years ago

Yes, Marc, sorry. Your nightmare scenario is playing out in front of you. It’s many ballplayers.

“for God’s sake” – Many apologies, and not personally offended, but you are (saying this lightly, oh so lightly) invoking God as a way to present your anger ideas as righteous within this baseball (sports) conversation.

rubesandbabes
8 years ago
Reply to  rubesandbabes

And Marc,

Thanks so much your editorial on my internet comment – you never countered any of the baseball ideas I put forward. Typical.

You are not much up with the subject and yes, despite your insistence, Barry Bonds is already being forever denied entry into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Discount!

Marc Schneider
8 years ago
Reply to  rubesandbabes

What internet comment are you referring to that I supposedly did an editorial about? I really don’t know what you mean.

I wasn’t really trying to counter your argument except to the extent that you assume that anyone that has a mid-career upsurge must be using steroids. I haven’t done any research but, surely, some players have improved later in their careers without juicing.

I guess I’m really bewildered about how people can still enjoy baseball if they assume that every great performance is steroid-related. It’s not so much you, but it seems that every time someone has an extraordinary performance, a large segment of the population assumes it’s steroids. That was really my only point.

As for using “for god’s sake” I wasn’t trying to portray myself as righteous (or, as I assume you would say, “self-righteous.”) But you are correct, I didn’t need to say it.

Hal
8 years ago

This is quite a good article, and makes some important points. Reading the comments, I’m startled to see that several people have clearly swallowed whole the very media distortions that it addresses, especially in regard to Bonds. With the disclosure that I am a Giants fan, and a Bonds fan – through all of his career as a Giant – I think there’s still a lot that’s been unsaid about him that may mitigate some of the negativity. When he came to SF as a Pirate, I was well primed to dislike the guy. Everything I’d read and heard about him painted him as a jerk and a prima donna who didn’t play hard, disrupted the clubhouse, etc. When he became a Giant, the more I watched him play, and continued to follow media coverage, the wider the gap became between what I observed and what I read and heard. The vast majority of media coverage, especially in the national media, amounted to character assassination, based on the factors noted in this article. He fared a bit better in the local media, but that relationship was still often contentious. The major exception was in the local broadcast media, where he was often interviewed, and could speak without being surrounded by hostile reporters. When not under attack, he was intelligent, articulate, even charming, with a sense of humor. I’m pretty sure that the “crowds” that made him anxious were the hostile media hordes. He certainly had no problem being watched by thousands on the field.

I can’t sit quiet when commenters continue to portray him as pure evil. The man had a very warm human side, was devoted to his family (which was not all roses), did extensive unheralded charity work, and more. He was also a brilliant baseball mind, with a deep appreciation of the game’s history and his place in it. I can’t quite wrap my head around the idea that he “defrauded” the sport. If he used PEDs, knowingly or not, exactly how much that affected his (or anyone’s) performance is far from clear. In any case, he actually DID what he did on the field. He didn’t FAKE the home runs, or any of his accomplishments; he didn’t claim to accomplish more than he actually did. And what he did was so far beyond what anyone who knowingly and admittedly used PEDs could do that I can’t see how one can ignore or deny those feats.

Watching Bonds on the field, I was never as bothered by whether his feats were chemically enhanced as by the concerted refusal of opponents to allow him to compete. Someone remarked that he would have hit 800 homers playing in a hitter-friendly park. I say if opponents had pitched to him like even the very best hitters of his day, he might well have hit 1000 home runs. Whatever anyone thinks of his other records, the most telling ones are the walks and intentional walks, which can’t be blamed on PEDs, as those are stats imposed on him by opponents who knew he’d beat them if given a fair chance. THAT is what spoiled my enjoyment of watching the greatest hitter most living fans have seen. Baseball stands alone as the one sport in which a player can be penalized for being too good, and Bonds is by far the best example of that. That he managed to accomplish so much despite being pitched around, especially in clutch situations, AND while being under continuous assault from media haters and fans infected with that hate, makes him even more remarkable in my book.

And, by the way, his conviction for obstruction of justice was thrown out this week.

I’d like to think that articles like this might lead a few journalists and commenters to take a hard look at their own opinions and attitudes, but I won’t hold my breath.