And Alas Barry Bonds and I have something in common.
Thru the week of October 21, 2007, while in the golden city I had been jogging from my hotel at Compton Place to Mccovy Cove and AT&T Park at the San Francisco bay. There at the bay are five bar fenced gates that look directly into the park from the right field foul line toward center field. From these gates one can look directly into the chain link fence that is the right field wall. The green grass, dirt infield, pitchers mound, and stands, can all be seen thru these gates. The sidewalk (opened to the public) is about twenty feet wide. One side looks into the park, while the other side looks directly into the bay. Every San Francisco night I ran down to these five fences and looked thru them onto at the field within. I would imagine first that I was playing right field, getting myself into a crouching position. With sweat pouring down my face, Paul O’Neill would often come to my mind, the Yankees right field warrior.
What I wouldn’t do to be just inside these fences, just twenty little old feet closer.
Then I would imagine I was getting a lead off first base. Pretending that I was standing 239 feet closer then I actually was. I wouldn’t get picked off is what I told myself. I wouldn’t be like Matt Holliday, who I had seen getting picked off earlier in the evening of game 2 of the 2007 World Series.
Man I wish I could play the game!
I wish I could swing a bat, or throw a ball!
I wish I didn’t get nervous just getting out of bed, let alone all the nervous energy I would feel if I were a major league ball player. Stepping into a big league batters box with 56,000 people watching my every step is so unfathomable to me that my stomach turns just thinking about it. Putting all talent aside or prospect of talent for that matter, I was nervous as a young man just playing little league and Babe Ruth. It robbed me from ever really judging my potential, but also made me realize that playing baseball was not to be my path in my life’s journey.
Then there is Barry Bonds.
The 43-year-old major league baseball veteran, holds the tainted record of most life-time homeruns hit by a major league baseball player. Tainted because of his use of performance enhancing drugs. By his own admission Barry has testified to using the Cream and the Clear two forms of an anabolic steroid. But the truth is Barry has used far greater performance enhancing drugs and has just never owned up to it.
Until today.
Bonds is due today in federal court in San Francisco for perjury charges. It is expected that the federal prosecution has enough evidence that Barry has lied about taking performance enhancing drugs to put Bonds in prison for up to 30 years.
It all dates back to 2003, when Bonds and five other major league players testified before a Federal Grand Jury. They were questioned about their involvement in the seizure of the Balco Laboratories and the arrest of its owner Victor Conte. The six players were granted total immunity for their honest testimony. (Tell the complete and total truth about Balco and you’re free!) Five players told the complete truth, but not Bonds. Barry denied any involvement in Balco, and denied ever knowingly using performance-enhancing drugs.
Now he faces the music.
Bonds and his defense team plan on fighting the charges. However its common legal knowledge that federal prosecutors don’t file perjury charges unless they are 99.9% positive they can get a guilty verdict from a jury. And there is plenty of evidence out there to convict Bonds.
Now most people will defend Bonds. "Leave him alone!" "All baseball players use drugs, so why single Bonds out. Why make him the poster boy of the steroid era?" "They are all millionaire cry baby cheater, but not criminals." "It's strictly a racial thing! Bonds broke the biggest record in baseball, and some people just don’t like it." These are all quotes I have heard on the radio, work place, and in the news in recent months, and they are all irrelevant.
What Bonds is being charged with, and what I have had a problem with from day one, is his arrogance, pride, disrespect and defiance for the game of baseball any more importantly the countries judicial system.
Bond lied to a Federal Grand Jury, and no one is above that!!!
This past week Barry said to reporters that he still wants to play in 2008. He has been quoted as saying he felt unappreciated for all he had done for the Giants and the city of San Francisco, and has asked his agent to find him a deal somewhere in baseball. However with a perjury indictment, and possible prison time lingering, no team in baseball will give Bonds a deal. It’s safe to say Barry’s time within the game of baseball has come to an end.
All baseball fans worship their heros, and despise their villains with great passion. We find even the subtlest similarities with our heros, and we do whatever possible to distance our own characteristics from our villains.
We wear the same shirts and hats as those we admire and curse and judge those we dislike. Even I, at 27-years-old, think of Paul O’Neill and Matt Holliday while jogging around the city of San Francisco.
Barry has always been a player whom I hate. His flat out arrogance his defiance of the game disgusts me. He is one of the great examples of a guy whom I distance myself from. Which leads me back to my initial point of this article, the common link between Bonds and myself.
Barry’s common link to me is that for almost opposite reasons, we are both locked out of AT&T Park in San Francisco. However the bars that lock me out of the park do not lock me out of choices and experiences throughout the rest of the world. In Bond's case, the bars that he will soon be locked behind will be holding him in a 6x6x6 foot jail cell.
Or at least I hope.
