Bar-roid and the Asterisk

A couple nights ago I watched a monumentally historic moment in sports...Barry Bonds hitting his 756th Home run to become the all-time professional baseball home run king. It capped a career I have followed for a long time.



Way back in 1979 I became a Pittsburgh Pirate fan when the first pack of cards I opened had a Willie Stargell card on top. At the time he was a star first baseman for the Pirates along with Dave Parker, Manny Sanguillen, submariner Kent Tekulve and a few others that quickly became my favorites. Alongside that fortuitous act of fate, the local Triple A team the Portland Beavers were the Pirates top farm club so I got to A) see future Pirates play a few games and B) once a year when the Pirates came through for their exhibition games I got to see them play live. That was a huge treat.



As a follower of the Pirates I loved their run with Doub Drabek as their ace and their star hitters, the Killer Bs, Bonds and Bonilla. (As a side note, that is one reason I always thought the Astros calling their 2 and 3 hitter pairings the Killer Bs was nothing but a cheap, originality-less copy much like the Colts calling James, Harrison and Manning the Triplets was kind of stupid after the great Cowboys run with Smith, Aikman and Irvin. If the name is a few months off being used for someone else...find something else.)



Bonds was fun to watch. He had a decent average, good power, and excellent speed to go with solid defense. He was a classic 5 tool guy. And the Pirates came close, oh so close, with that triumvirate of stars. But then they separated over the money. Pittsburgh simply could not afford to pay them as much as other places could....or would.



It is one of those strange elements of modern life in the United States that we resent other people maximizing their earnings. What should be more important to say...Ken Griffey Jr. Making as much money as he can and playing where he wants to or making happy some random Mariners fan he will probably never meet? In all seriousness, sports are one of the few areas of life where a person is criticized more heavily for pursuing their own happiness as if it is a personal affront to the viewers. There was a small (but not lasting) outcry when Hillary Clinton ran for office in a state she had never really lived in. I seriously doubt it affected the fans of watching Arkansas or New York politics. Nobody in Arkansas was heard complaining their star politician was leaving. But heaven protect the Arkansas baseballer who elects to go play for the Yankees because he can make more money. Sure it was fun to watch the Mariners when they had A-rod and Griffey belting home run after home run. But if someone offered me a ridiculous number such as was offered to A-Rod to go to Texas...why would I take a third of that to play in Seattle?



I bring this up because I was upset when Bonds left Pittsburgh over the money. In retrospect...that was pretty foolish of me. Whether it is over a dollar an hour or a million a year, why should he not have the same right to maximize his earnings? And more to the point...if he wanted to play for the same team his godfather Willie Mays played for, why should he not be able to?



Be that as it may, his game changed in San Francisco. No longer the base-stealing speedster, he upped his power numbers of the course of the next few years. And then he exploded. Just a couple years after McGwire and Sosa both passed the decades old single season home run total of 61 of Maris, Bonds launched a staggering 73 balls into the grandstands.



Around this time complaints started raging over his (alleged) use of steroids. (Hence the name in the title...Bar (pronounced "bear")-roid Bonds. Certainly, the evidence, while circumstantial, seems likely to convince any reasonable person