Tim Noonan
The Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, is literally the mythological soul of America. There are 295 elected members in the hall - 240 are former players while the rest are owners, executives and umpires. They are all, reputedly, people who have done things the right way and never, ever cheated the game.
I mention all this because Barry Bonds is a shameless and reprehensible character. He is also the greatest and most fearsome hitter I have ever seen and I have been keenly following baseball for more than 40 years. But don't take my word for it. Bonds has hit more home runs in a season and more career home runs than anyone who has played the game. There is one more thing Bonds is: a convicted felon.
Last week a jury in San Francisco found Bonds guilty of obstructing justice by testifying under oath during a government investigation that he never knowingly took steroids. After spending millions of dollars and more than five years investigating him, the government could not get the more serious perjury charge to stick.
Within seconds of the verdict, the pundits weighed in on the Hall of Fame chances of the most prolific slugger baseball has ever seen. Ah yes, membership in the Hall of Fame, voted on by baseball writers. If not for the media, the feats of players like Bonds would only exist in person. But someone has to chronicle the game and someone has to write the stories about guys like Bonds who make more money in one day than they will in one year.
Someone has to chase them down in the clubhouse to try to get a meaningless quote, only to be embarrassed and ridiculed when players like Bonds condescendingly treat them like the most insignificant being in the universe. And someone has to show up again tomorrow and do this whole charade again to the tune of 162 games a year. That someone would naturally be bitter and if that someone stays around the game long enough they will eventually become a card-carrying member of the Baseball Writers Association of America, which means they get to decide whether or not Bonds goes into the Hall of Fame.
Despite the universal hatred towards Bonds in the media, his numbers and accomplishments should make it next to impossible to keep him out of Cooperstown. But now it's official that he - and virtually every other player of note in his generation - used steroids, it's time for the writers to get pious. Those writers kept admitted steroid slugger Mark McGwire out of the hall despite his credentials and they will do the same to Sammy Sosa, Manny Ramirez, Alex Rodriguez, flame-thrower Roger Clemens and, of course, Bonds because they 'cheated' the game.
And just who are these 581 pious gatekeepers that vote? They are people like writer Jay Mariotti, who submitted a blank ballot this year because he felt no player was worthy of election and has admitted in the past that he considers moral fibre to be just as important as home runs. And Mariotti knows morality intimately, particularly in light of his arrest and subsequent conviction this year for domestic abuse. He may have lost his job with ESPN but he still has a Hall of Fame vote.
Some writers, like newbie Lisa Olson, are refreshingly honest. 'Journalists shouldn't be voting on people they cover,' she said. 'It's akin to having journalists who cover the pentagon vote on who should receive the purple star.'
And just who are some of the 295 elected people in the hall that Bonds and his ilk will never join? They are people like long-time owners Charles Comiskey, Tom Yawkey, Clark Griffith and former commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Not only did they never 'cheat' the game, they also did everything in their power to ensure that blacks were not officially allowed to play in the majors until Jackie Robinson broke through the colour barrier in 1947. Of course, mention that to the pious gatekeepers and they will say the country was racist back then, why should baseball have been any different? It was a different time. I agree, it was a different time just like the 1990s and the early 21st century were different times.
Thanks to a work stoppage, baseball was dead in the water in 1994. Kids hardly cared about the boring old national pastime. So the game got big and buff, balls started flying out of the park at a record clip. Baseball cashed in with tag lines like: 'Chicks dig the long ball'. Pitchers and batters were putting on frighteningly massive and impossible-to-hide muscle. But ratings were soaring so it was easy to look away. Tony Gwynn played during the era and is now in the Hall of Fame. He never took steroids but he believes guys like Bonds and McGwire belong in the hall with him. 'In the late 1980s and '90s, we had no rules [in regards to steroids],' he said. 'We knew, players knew, owners knew, everybody including the media knew, and we didn't say anything about it.'
The sluggers whose home run numbers Bonds smashed, iconic names like Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron, apparently never took steroids. But none of the pitchers they faced took steroids either. Because he was the best juicer in a juiced-up game, Bonds earned over US$150 million in his career. Somehow I think he will survive without a plaque. The pious gatekeepers might feel they have the right to control the legacies of this juiced-up generation and by voting no they exercise that right. But I don't need baseball writers to tell me what cheating is. And I certainly don't need the Hall of Fame to tell me who the greatest hitter I ever saw was.
