Recently in Barry Bonds Category

The start of the 2008 Major League Baseball season has begun and it seems as though everyone is excited but me. Barbecues, beer, and baseball. The beginning of summer, the start of warmer days, of new beginnings.

MLB is enjoying enormous success, with record attendance levels, huge television contracts, and a ridiculous amount of coverage spent on ESPN. (Why have baseball highlights on Sportscenter and then an hour long edition right afterwards on Baseball Tonight. Isn't the NBA being sold short?).

But underneath the happy little smiley face that MLB is fronting to the nation, there is a very dark and sinister side. It's a side of baseball that is threatening to make me disown the sport. I'm a fan; I go to games, watch highlights, keep up with the stats, etc. I played Little League Baseball and fell in love, and it's been a love affair ever since. Now why do I suddenly feel guilty about being passionate for baseball?

It's because what they're doing to Barry Bonds is criminal. Isn't it ironic that the San Francisco Giants had no problem playing Barry last year, collecting money, benefiting from the huge crowds and television exposure, and basking in the glow of Barry knocking ball after ball into McCovey Cove. And now, not so silently, they are removing everything associated with him at the ball park, trying to cut all cords. This would be bad enough under any circumstances, but how about this: Barry has never been convicted of knowingly using performance enhancing steroids.

It's pretty sad when an individual who gave his heart and soul to an organization has that same organization remove all ties with him based on allegations. This is what our country has become? I know this is sports and not a legal forum, but doesn't every person deserve the benefit of having an assumption of innocence unless proven otherwise?

Evidently athletes don't. And especially Black athletes don't. I'm not someone with my head in the sand and a pair of blinders on. It's not lost on me that Barry, who hit 28 home runs last year and hasn't admitted guilt or been proven guilty, can't find a job while Jason Giambi, who admitted guilt, gets cheered every time he walks to the plate. What a joke, but I'm not laughing!

Hasn't the media learned the lesson that you should always give the benefit of the doubt to someone just like they, themselves, would want that benefit of the doubt were they ever accused of something. I thought we all learned that in 4th grade.

Look what happened to Kobe Bryant. If you read the papers or watched TV, you saw immediate speculation of how many years in prison Kobe would do. Never mind that he might not be guilty. He got his name trashed, his image and marketability forever tainted. Even McDonalds, one of his sponsors, dropped him like a bad habit before the case ever even hit trial! It didn't occur to the media that Kobe is rich, and the woman who accused him of rape might be full of hot air? You don't have to be Perry Mason to see the woman had a motive to make such an accusation. It would be cheaper for Kobe to just pay the woman off rather than pay a high powered legal firm to represent him. That's true even when he's innocent! I'm thinking that's what that woman thought. Only she didn't realize Kobe's an ice-cold assassin who would call her bluff during the day at court and go drop 50 on some team later that night. That's gangster.

It has been reported that the baseball player's association may be looking into why no team is signing Barry Bonds, suspecting possible collusion. Okay I'm all for players' union sticking up for its players, but this may be going too far.

Of course, we've all been bombarded with the whole Barry Bonds career mess: home run king, allegedly shot up on 'roids and lied under oath about it; blah, blah, blah. The posters on ESPN had a field-day talking about how Barry should be out of baseball because of his character issues.

This is a part of my response to them: "You idiots know good-and-well you don't care about a player's personality as long as the team that player is on is winning.

"People didn't like Dennis Rodman's personality or Rasheed Wallace's, but they sure rooted for the team when they won an NBA championship, (Rodman with the old Pistons and the Bulls, Wallace with the new Pistons). Babe Ruth was no saint either (a heavy drinker, womanizer, and gluttoness eater from the looks of his body), but he is still honored as one of the best. Ty Cobb was a racist pig, but people are still talking about how great he was. The point is that players who are jerks come in all sizes, shapes, and colors. Most people don't care that they are jerks as long as they are winners!

The issue isn't really whether Bonds shouldn't play because of his character. It's whether any team wants to spend any money on a guy who is 43 and can't really run. Granted, he still may be a productive player, but there's only a handful of teams who have enough money to pay him, and they can spend their money a lot more wisely.

So Roger Clemens is being murdered by the public for being a bold face liar and conveniently for the bias mainstream media a report comes out late last night that Barry Bonds tested positive for steroids about a month after he hit his record breaking 73rd home run. Every media out in America ran it as breaking news and once again Bonds became a much easier target than Clemens. Funny thing though the report was incorrect because of a typo and the information had already been reported a few years back. Instead of an immediate retraction it was buried by the majority of the mainstream media. Look we all know that Bonds used steroids, but lets face the facts Clemens is what is going on right now and by trying to use Bonds to deflect criticisms from Clemens just shows how much the media doesn't want their Golden Boy to have shine taken away.