Storm clouds over baseball.
By: Hank Kalet
Sometime in April, Barry Bonds will pass Babe Ruth as No. 2 on baseball’s all-time home run list.
And then, perhaps by the end of the season, he’ll make his assault on Hank Aaron’s record of 755 home runs a remarkable feat given that Bonds was still 310 home runs shy of Aaron’s total just six years ago.
It is this chase and the shadow cast by allegations of steroid-use and the likely rejection of Bonds by some fans that will color the way the 2006 baseball season will be viewed.
Given that the season ahead is likely to feature a bunch of young, exciting teams like the Milwaukee Brewers and an array of new stars like the Mets’ David Wright and Jose Reyes this is unfortunate.
But when the league’s best player is chasing its most storied record under a cloud of suspicion, what can you expect?
Bonds, of course, has been at the center of an ugly storm that has been brewing for several years, as questions of steroid use and its impact on the game have ruined reputations and altered careers.
Former major leaguers Jose Canseco and the late Ken Caminiti both allege that steroid use is rampant. Congress held hearings last spring on the issue and Baltimore Oriole Rafael Palmeiro, who testified under oath during the hearings that he had never used steroids, later tested positive for steroid use and was suspended shortly after joining the formerly exclusive 500-homer club. Yankees Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield have also been snared in the web, with both testifying before a federal grand jury in California that was investigating BALCO, a sports supplement firm, and its principle owners on tax evasion and steroid distribution charges.
But Bonds is the biggest fish in the pond, easily the best player of his generation and among the greatest in the sport’s history.
Bonds has been dogged by the steroid question for years, thanks to his late-career power surge and the transformation of his physique. As most baseball fans know and the sporting press is fond of pointing out Bonds has grown from the sleek, prototypical five-tool star to a bulked-up, cartoon version of a power hitter. And his offensive production has grown, as well, with 258 of his 708 home runs coming in a five-year span after the age of 36 when most players are on the downside of their careers.
The questions intensified last month with the publication of "Game of Shadows," a book by San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams that allegedly details steroid use by Bonds and other Major League players. It is based partly on BALCO grand jury testimony and was excerpted in Sports Illustrated. The book alleges that Bonds, jealous of the attention paid to sluggers Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, used a variety of steroids and other substances beginning in 1998 to bulk up and boost his power.
In the book’s wake, fans and sportswriters have been calling for Bonds’ suspension and for any records he set, and those set by others like McGwire, Sosa and Palmeiro, to be removed from the record books or at the very least have an asterisk placed next to them to indicate that special circumstances may have been involved.
Bonds and others over whom suspicion has been cast like McGwire, Sosa, Palmeiro, Giambi, etc. are cheaters, the argument goes. They have defiled the game and must be dealt with accordingly. Even Pete Rose an admitted gambler who has been banned from the game for life for betting on games has weighed in against the steroid gang.
Steroids are a problem in the game, one that the league essentially ignored until recently. But the economics of the game home runs attract fans, which boost ticket sales and make the game more marketable on TV, which in turn result in bigger salaries for bulked-up players make all of us complicit in this mess.
But given that performance enhancing drugs have been around a long time (Jim Bouton’s "Ball Four" describes ballplayers using uppers) and cheating has been way of baseball life (Gaylord Perry, the master of the illegal spitball pitch, is in the Hall of Fame) since the game’s inception, singling out Bonds makes no sense.
The best that baseball can probably hope for is that, now that the issue has become so public, players will stay off the juice and we can move on and that the steroid cloud will not obscure what promises to be an interesting 2006 season.
Hank Kalet is managing editor of the South Brunswick Post and The Cranbury Press. His e-mail is hkalet@pacpub.com.