Barry Hits 756*

Well, Bonds finally broke the record and really, is anyone outside of San Francisco excited about it? Just to clarify one final thing, since a few Bonds supporters have made comments on this site about whether or not we can be sure the charges in "Game of Shadows" are 100 percent true or not. If anything in that book was incorrect, the athletes mentioned in its pages (Bonds, Gary Sheffield, Jason Giambi, Marion Jones, Bill Romanowski, Tim Montgomery, Benito Santiago, etc.) would have sued the shit out of Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams for libel and defamation of character. To date, not one lawsuit has been filed. To close the book on this issue let me say this, Barry Bonds is a ridiculously talented individual and would have been a first ballot Hall of Famer. But he sold his soul when he decided to do what others like Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Rafael Palmeiro had done to get better. His legacy will be forever tainted by that fact. I don't care if everyone else was cheating too, your mother always told you two wrongs don't make a right. that fact does not exonerate him. And to the "Hank Aaron could have cheated, we'll never know" crowd, shut up. You don't think someone, after all this time and all that has happened, would have possibly come forward and said something if that were true? You know how much money a book talking about Hank Aaron using steroids would make? Regardless of that, what we do know is that Barry cheated and by supporting him or acknowledging his record you are tacitly approving of what he did and giving the impression that you think it's acceptable to cheat in order to get ahead. We just can't get on board with that. We'd like to think that somewhere, something pure still exists in sports. Hey, maybe we're naive and totally misguided in that stance, but we really hope not.