What About Barry?

Selig says no decision made on Bonds investigation, the headline screams. With the upcoming release of the book Game of Shadows, Barry Bonds is back in the spotlight. More specifically, the biggest question regarding Bonds is back in the spotlight: Did he use steroids?

I'm told that one of the purposes of a blog is to opine on things sociological. And since this issue is getting so much attention as the World Baseball Classic winds down and MLB's opening day approaches, here's my take on the subject.

First, let me state my personal opinion of Barry Bonds: I don't like him. I think he's arrogant, cocky, self-centered and self-serving. He's rude to the media and he's rude to the fans. It sickens me to see his name listed with the likes of Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron. If I were a major league manager, I'd tell my pitching staff to throw at him every single time he stepped up to the plate. If he suffered a career-ending knee injury as he was rounding the bases on home run #713, I'd be ecstatic.

So no, I don't like Barry Bonds, either as a player or as a person. But is he a cheater? I'm afraid I have to say no.

First: There's really no evidence that he knowingly used steroids or any other performance-enhancing substance. Sure, the upcoming book is full of interviews and reports and other such evidence--all of which is entirely circumstantial. The fact is that Barry Bonds has never, to my knowledge, failed a steroid test. Sure he's bulked up a lot over the past decade. It's certainly suspicious. But suspicion is not proof. And this is still America, and in American jurisprudence, innocence must be presumed in the absence of proof. It's that simple.

Second: Even if he did use steroids, it wasn't cheating. Until very recently, there's been nothing wrong with using steroids, Andro, or any other such things in baseball. Sure it was frowned upon by most, but there was no rule against it. Additionally, it's never been shown that he broke any laws where steroids or supplements were concerned. It's not like he got up in front of Congress, vehemently denied ever using steroids, and then failed a test a few months later. (See Rafael Palmeiro, a first-ballot Hall of Famer two years ago who'll now be lucky to get in at all.) So even if Bonds injected himself with every known performance-enhancing drug under the sun, as long as there were no rules against it, the simple fact is that he didn't cheat. There is no crime if there is no law to break.

Third: Consider the sources. The authors of the aforementioned book are newspaper reporters. They're not cops or detectives, they're not insiders at BALCO, and they're not working for the Commissioner of Baseball. They're journalists. They're interested in one thing only: the story. Consider what they did with their information. Who did they take it to: the Commissioner (wishy-washy and ineffective though he may be)? The President? The Senate? No. They took it to a publisher, and it's going to make them rich. And nothing threatens to compromise the integrity of data more than the chance at big money.

So it's no surprise to me that Commissioner Selig hasn't ordered an investigation yet, because there's nothing to investigate. There's no real evidence that any crime or violation really took place. There's nothing here that we haven't heard before. All the reports and questions are the some reports and questions we've seen for the last few years. Nothing has changed, except that a new set of people has found a new way to cash in on the controversy.

It's the same old thing for 2006. People will go on questioning Bonds, and he'll go on hitting fungoes into McCovey Cove. He'll undoubtedly catch The Babe before the All-Star Game. He may or may not catch Hank Aaron, but that hardly matters now. He's already got the single-season home run record, a record that is unlikely ever to be broken now that steroid testing has finally arrived in baseball. His place in history is secure.

Too bad.