Bonds Redux

Editor's note: Well, it's been a little while since I've posted. I'm not sure if I'm supposed to apologize for that, but I will, because I'm a big apologizer. Sorry. I've scribbled a few thoughts on Barry Bonds here, and I'm telling you right up front that these are not really finished thoughts. Yes, you are getting unfinished thoughts, a rough draft of my mind. You can't pay enough for that, eh? You also get a few footnotes and a Polish joke. Now that's a blog. Oh yeah, please buy the book.

Well, that was an interesting three weeks. I went to Detroit to sign books, to Milwaukee to watch Barry Bonds ground out, to San Francisco to hear Bud Selig say he would make a sincere effort to see Bonds break the home run record (he did not – Selig, I mean), to New York to escape Bonds and get chased by a beautiful bartender, to Kansas City to change clothes (and not a moment too soon*), and to River Falls, Wisconsin to try and figure out my old friend Priest Holmes (rolled snake eyes on that one). And now, finally, I return home to Kansas City, where it will hit 100 degrees every day for the next week (it is 11:30 p.m. and 90 degrees outside right now -- and that isn't a dry heat, people).

Ah, the glamorous life of a sportswriter.

I will probably tell you the story of the bartender at some point, but first I figure this is a good time and place to wrap up my feelings about Barry Bonds**. I can’t really say I have a much greater grip on this thing after the chase than I did before but I can tell you this: I have never in my life been on an assignment that created more angry email and phone calls than this one. Sure, I’ve had plenty of individual columns that have sparked much greater rage***, but I’m not talking about the columns themselves. I’m talking about the assignment. People were freaking TICKED at me for going on the Bonds chase in the first place.

It was very strange. At the beginning, the “You need to come home and write about something else” emails and phone calls seemed odd and almost quaint, but they kept coming, more and more of them, and they grew angrier, and after a while I started to think that this wasn’t necessarily the minority opinion of a few crackpots. These people – a substantial number of them – were really mad at me for writing about Barry Bonds. I couldn’t tell if it was because they didn’t want ANYBODY to write about Bonds or if they specifically didn’t want ME to write about Bonds, but in either case it was quite unlike any reaction I’ve ever received on any assignment.****

All of this is a way of saying that by the time Bonds finally started hitting home runs, I was gone, and I was more or less emotionally drained. I was in River Falls when Bonds hit No. 756, and I can’t say I felt anything resembling emotion while watching him round the bases, and then point to the sky while his son tried to hug him. I recall the words Roger Maris said went through his mind when he hit his 61st home run: “It’s over.” Not “Thank God it’s over” or “I can’t believe it’s over” or even “It’s finally over.” No. Just “It’s over.” That’s what I thought too.

Since then, though, I have thought more about it, and while I can’t say that I’ve had any breakthrough of clarity on this whole issue, I guess I can say that I’ve started to look at it all a bit differently. Yes, I suspect Bonds used lots of illegal stuff. I suspect many baseball players did. I suspect the powers of baseball not only allowed it to happen, they tacitly encouraged it. Those homers brought a lot of people out to the ballparks. Whether steroids were a big reason for those homers or a small reason (or even no reason at all), I don’t think anyone in baseball wanted to shake things up.

I guess the way I see it now is this way: This is our time. I don’t like the use of performance enhancing drugs. But I don’t like that before 1947, there were no dark-skinned players in the big leagues. I don’t like that for many years, greenies were popped like PEZ in clubhouses (I was told on this trip that amphetamines are actually rated more dangerous – and are therefore punished harder -- on the government drug list than steroids). I don’t like that players threw the 1919 World Series, and I don’t like that Charlie Comiskey sent those players flat champagne. Hey, I don’t like lots of stuff.

But this is what we have. Players have hit lots of home runs in the last 15 years. And now Barry Bonds is the all-time home run champ. He’s the best baseball player I’ve ever seen. He may not be lovable, he may not be admirable and he may not be clean. But I guess I'm not as bothered by that now. It's easy to forget that the home run record -- as cherished as it has been -- is only a number. People will remember Barry Bonds for more than the record, just as we remember the all-time greats for more than their numbers or achievements. Ted Williams spit at fans. Stan Musial signed autographs until the last kid was happy. Rogers Hornsby was a jackass, Ty Cobb sharpened his spikes and, later, may have killed a man, Bob Gibson pitched baseballs with a fire that bordered on pure hate, Gaylord Perry scuffed and spit on baseballs, Babe Ruth visited sick kids in hospitals and also ran naked through trains while being chased by women with knives. Pete Rose gambled on baseball and got more hits than any man ever. Mickey Mantle was an alcoholic. John McGraw once hit an umpire. Cap Anson, more than any single player, created the color line in baseball. Leo Durocher was suspended for gambling. And so on. And so on. And so on.

These are human beings who play these games – multi-layered, multi-faceted, chaotic, untidy, heroic, cowardly, honest and lying human beings – and our memories of them are not simple or stark; they don’t have to be one-dimensional. For me, it has been a thrill to watch Barry Bonds play ball even if I have my misgivings about him. I recognize him as the home run champ, even as I admire Hank Aaron’s home run achievement more. I even like Bonds in an odd way, but I don’t think it would be any fun going to dinner with him (not that he has invited me). One day in San Francisco, I met three different people, and they defined Bonds alternately as: “Cheater,” “Misunderstood,” and “Asshole.” I’ll bet he’s all three and then some.

He’s also man of our time. In many ways, he’s THE athlete of our confusing time. He’s gifted but angry, arrogant but self-aware, rich but needy, transcendent but unloved, innocent but guilty, charming but cruel, private but hungry for the spotlight. If you somehow land 200 years into the future – and the ozone layer still exists – and you were ask: “How would you describe America of the early 21st Century?” you could do worse than to tell the story of Barry Bonds.

I guess that’s how I see it now. I think when I started on this chase, I worried some about the conflicting emotions that Bonds can inspire. How do you tell such a muddled story? Now I think those conflicting emotions ARE the story. There’s nothing neat or orderly about baseball, and there never really has been. In the end, we have this: Barry Bonds is a big character. I suppose the home run king should be a big character.

Footnotes:

* I can’t help but think here of one of my father’s favorite jokes. It’s about the Polish Army – I guess if you speak Polish (my father; not me) and a have a name like Posnanski, you’re entitled to tell Polish jokes – and it goes like this: Apparently the army had been on a very, very long march. Finally, they reached a resting area, and the commander called everyone together and said, “Good news everyone. Tonight, we will have a change of underwear!” Everyone cheered. And the commander said: “Good. Now Grabowski you change with Krzyzewski. Bielawski you change with Mihalik. … In honor of my heritage, the names chosen for this joke are all members of the National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame, of which I am a proud voter.

** I want to reiterate that what follows is a babbling mush. I’ve read ahead. It's not too late to turn back.

*** I once wrote a column that inspired very large Cincinnati Bengals’ tight end Tony McGee to threaten me. It was strange too because McGee was quite a good guy, and I liked him, and he had actually studied journalism in college, and I wasn’t trying to rip him, and as far as I could tell he did not read the column in question. It is also true, though, that in the column I wrote that he had real trouble catching the ball, and while I can assure you (and tried to assure him) that the context of the column was different (it was actually intended to be a sympathetic column designed to show how hard Tony worked on his receiving skills), I also cannot deny that the premise involved his inability to catch. Well, hey, he did drop two or three touchdown passes that Sunday..

**** It can wear on you as a writer when you are covering something that you suspect people don’t care about. I felt that way a little bit at the Winter Olympics in Torino last year. Remember those? Of course you don’t. Nobody watched. I felt like I was writing for crickets. Still it’s much worse when you are writing stories that you suspect a percentage of readers are violently opposed to reading.