"Baseball fans around the world owe Barry Bonds a debt of gratitude for being lucky enough to watch him play. He should be treasured by the national pastime, and a grand celebration by the commissioner's office should be in order." -- Jeff Borris
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Virginal Bay Area fanboy or subversive comedian? Unfortunately, neither; Jeff Borris is Barry Bonds' agent. He has also apparently read up on his ancient philosophy. While Socrates stood trial for atheism and corruption of youth, among other things, it was demanded of him that he explain how he believed he should be dealt with. Socrates, hip to some much higher-level shit than his Hellenic contemporaries, responded with a vocalization of his feeling that he should be given a place in the ancient and sacred hearth of Athens as well as free meals for life. An eternity later, humanity is still known to occasionally crucify its heroes. So often it is only in their death (even if it is a figurative one in the "career" or "character" vein) that they can be revealed as heroes, for as Joni Mitchell angrily surmised, you don't know what you've got until it's gone. Is Barry Bonds our time's Socrates? Is his career not only great but transcendent, one whose magnitude can only be eclipsed by its legacy? I suppose that the two exist in parallel spheres. Socrates was the first identifiable champion of the inquisitive mind. His often zany yet frighteningly applicable template for the ascension of man to wisdom was predicated upon man's natural quest for physical pleasure. Also, much like Barry Bonds, a lot of what we claim to know about Socrates is really a litany of secondary sources compiled by his equally famous student Plato. In Bonds' case, what we claim to know is what we hear from Tony Kornheiser, Peter Gammons, Bob Costas, Dan Shaughnessy or Jay Mariotti, none of whom quite embody the commitment to truth and/or wisdom precedented by Plato. Still, in our giant media cocoon planet, we feel we not only know Barry Bonds but are entitled to pass judgment on his every deed. I am not above this feeling of entitlement. I hate Barry Bonds. I want to kick him in the head, and I want you to kick him in the head. I want you to want to kick him, and I want you to want me to kick him. He is evil and must be punished. Socrates was most assuredly a pedophile. Is this not worse than using performance-enhancing chemicals, both legal and illegal (not that Bonds necessarily used a wide variety of drugs, but the ones he did use were not specifically banned by Major League Baseball until 1998) in order to compete at the highest level? Though a strong believer in the concept of "different times", I am nonetheless creeped out by the idea of old men and young boys, as I'm sure you may be. Unfortunately for Barry Bonds, notable contributions to academia and philosophy remain notable regardless of the particular way in which their contributors were revealed to be sick, deranged or any other adjective that pointed to their betrayal of the integrity of the pursuit of truth. This is because truth, as some much later successors to the throne of philosophical contemporariness would suggest, is relative and that there are no absolutes. Sport, however, is a tale of the tape; a story decided by dids and didn'ts in the way that philosophy is determined by coulds and shoulds. With Barry Bonds, it's only a matter of time before anyone who cares to know will learn the facts surrounding Bonds' purported misdeeds. This coming season is looking like the one during which he will surpass Hank Aaron's all-time MLB mark of 755 home runs. Many, myself and I would imagine Aaron included, see this as the flameout of a selfish fuckhead, the last stand of an unconscionably horrible bastard whose entire career has been a celebration of himself. But hasn't Bonds always given the fans in Pittsburgh and San Francisco exactly what they wanted? Yes. Have the 9.5 million people to attend Giants games over the past three years had to wrestle with a gripping hatred of Barry Bonds on the way into Pac Bell/AT&T Park? Doubtful. Socrates, as relentless and headstrong as Barry Bonds (whose head is literally fortified thanks to years of steroid abuse), was ultimately forced to drink poison. Bonds clearly is a baseball atheist (ask any one of those "baseball as the last bastion of innocence" wieners), and he has certainly corrupted our youth. To this day, he is the only athlete in my history with sports to have talked shit back to me during a game. And I was 12. It's not up to us to nail his character to a cross, however. Unlike in philosophy, the relativity of truth will do no good here. It is necessary to wait until Congress can squeeze the facts out of his enormous mutant head. Only then can we point our finger at Bonds and say, "there's the bad guy".
