“Bonds is a disgrace to the game of baseball.”  This is the message being  sent out by the media over the issue of Bonds allegedly taking steroids.  Never has the media attacked a member of the sports world in the way that Barry Bonds is currently being attacked.  Never has the sporting community been in such agreement over the dislike of a player.  And never has everyone been so wrong.

 I am just baffled at the way Barry Bonds is being treated.
 Sportswriters around the country are drooling over the opportunity to write an article  that rips Bonds.  You can’t watch 5 minutes of ESPN without seeing Bonds portrayed negatively.  People are even spending several years of their life writing books with the goal of bringing him down.  And I ask the simple question…why?

I know what you’re thinking, he deserves to be attacked because he disrespected the game by using steroids to inflate his numbers.  But this is nothing more than an assumption that people are making based on the absolute overload of coverage involving Bonds and steroids.  In a court of law, people are said to be innocent until proven guilty.  Apparently this doesn’t carry over to the baseball diamond.  Keep in mind that with all of the work being done to bring him down, there is still not enough evidence to prove that Barry Bonds used steroids.  Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, the authors of the upcoming book “Game of Shadows”, have put spent several years into proving that one man is guilty of taking steroids.  And after all of that work, we’re right back to where we started.  We have new rumors and interviews, but it still comes down to who you believe.  Is everyone making their decision on this issue over the fact that Bonds has gotten bigger late in his career?  A person getting stronger after the age of 35 may be puzzling, but it is far from incriminating.  There is just no proof that Bonds has used steroids.He’s tested positive as many times as you or I have…zero.

 But no matter what, people will make up their own minds on whether or not he is guilty of juicing.  However, don’t you think that if everyone was treated like Bonds, there would be a whole lot more people under investigation?  Why doesn’t the media pick on other professional athletes?

The authors of “Game of Shadows” may claim that their goal is not to attack Bonds, but to show everyone the truth.  If that’s the case they better get writing because there are hundreds of other pro athletes out there.  If a book came out claiming that Cal Ripken took steroids, people would lay into the authors and the book would be a disgrace.  But for some reason, everyone gives the authors of “Game of Shadows” all the credit in the world.  People act like these guys are helping expose the truth about steroids in sports.  Writing a book that helps to stop the use of steroids
 in all of sports would be a very good and respectful cause.  Writing a book dedicated to tearing someone down is not.

 These authors say that Bonds started juicing because he was jealous of Mark Mcgwire.  This makes a lot of sense, except that Bonds is vastly superior to Mcgwire in every aspect of the game.  Bonds blows him away in every offensive and defensive statistic imaginable.  Anyone can see that if Bonds has anything, it’s confidence. 

For Barry Bonds to be jealous of a player like Mcgwire just isn’t reasonable. Because of the allegations surrounding Bonds, most people believe that his stats should either be stripped from the record books, or appear with an asterisk beside them.  This is ridiculous.  First of all, until recently Major League Baseball had no steroid policy whatsoever. 

The substances that many believe Bonds was taking weren’t even banned in the baseball rulebook.  If you want to put an asterisk next to Bonds’ records then you have to do it to everyone.  Just as much suspicion could be found on anybody else.  If Bonds tests positive sometime in the future, then I completely agree that his records should be wiped clean.  But to put an asterisk next to Barry’s records with the evidence we have is wrong.

 Everyone seems to root against him so that they can keep the claim that the legends like Babe Ruth were the best to play the game.  Should we put an asterisk next to Ruth’s records because he played in an all white league?  Black and Latino players weren’t allowed to play until 1947.

So because of this should we have an asterisk next to the records of Ruth, Musial, or DiMaggio?  This is a much more sound argument than the one against Bonds.  But if someone suggested this, the fans and the media would defend these players like they are heroes.

People are making judgments about Bonds that are based on nothing.  Why are people continuing to spend their free time trying to come up with a way to prove that Barry is guilty?   Did he do something so horrific that I am unaware of?  When did the issue of steroids become all about Bonds?

The issue of steroids in baseball should be focused on preventing future use.  Steroid policies need to start in high school and continue to the professional level.

Major League Baseball claims to be focused on doing this.  But this process would be much further along if the time spent trying to
incriminate Bonds was better spent toward removing steroid use from America’s youth.  People seem to have forgotten that the problem baseball has is developing an effective steroid policy. The problem lies in the league’s management…not in the league’s players…and not in Barry Bonds.