Even though this San Francisco Giants player is two home runs shy of tying the record set by Hank Aaron in 1974 and may do so during the current series against my beloved Atlanta Braves, I’m cheering for him to tie and break the record.
Probably because so many others – especially white people – are rooting against this man who lives by his own rules of media engagement. White sports journalists are not accustomed to this and have accentuated the negative. That has poisoned the history-making home run record chase for others.
I was disappointed Sunday by a commentary on CBS Sunday Morning by a journalist I ordinarily admire: Bob Schieffer. He said, among other things, “Barry Bonds is no hero. He is just a guy who hits home runs. Who would want a kid to be like him?”
See his full commentary at:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/07/22/opinion/schieffer/main3086258.shtml
A whole lot of white people hated the Braves’ Hammering Hank Aaron when he homed in on the previous record set by Babe Ruth. People then, as they are now with Bonds, sought ways to place an asterisk next to his record, questioning forever its legitimacy. Now he is the home run god and Bonds is the evil interloper. Because Aaron and a number of baseball’s bigwigs have said they won’t be present whenever Bonds ties or breaks the record, I’m cheering for this godson of the great Willie Mays all the more.
Go, Barry!
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3 comments:
eh--I'm always against lionizing athletes or holding them up as role models or heroes, but at the same time, I think we ought to hold them to at least the same standards we would ordinary folks. By that measure, Bonds has more than earned his reputation. I'm not saying he's gotten 100% fair treatment in the press (and there is surely a racist element at play there that is to be deplored), but what's to like, really?
He has never missed an opportunity to be surly--often downright nasty--to anyone who crosses his path. While that won't make Barry unique in any list of pro sports stars, it surely is not a mark in his favor. Moreover, he is quite likely guilty of tax evasion, openly cheated on his wife and almost certainly achieved a great measure of his success by cheating extensively, all the while comically lying about it before a grand jury. If Bonds were a co-worker instead of a famous ballplayer, we would talk about him behind his back as that jerk Barry who sits at the cubicle in the corner.
I hear you, but what you have said misses my point entirely. You did not see anywhere that I called him a role model. He is a superb baseball player -- and he's being dissed for reasons that are irrelevant to that feat. Other athletes, including baseball players of renown, have been flawed. But somehow a surly black man is in and of itself evidence of evil or criminality.
I am rooting for him to hit 755-plus home runs. That's all.
Most of what I've heard against Bonds has been along the lines of "unnatural enhancement." That's my problem with him, but it's also the problem I have with other players... and that's the problem I have with the big wigs who have fostered, encouraged, and allowed this "unnatural" situation.
The whole thing is much bigger than Bonds, so I don't see him as some lone, evil, athletic corrupter of children.
I'm so drowsy. I hope some of these comments make at least a bit of sense.
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