Artificial bonding

A giant has been screaming at me all week.

Every newspaper throughout the land of the United States of America has been transfixed on the record-breaking baseball achievements of Barry Bonds. Headlines on front and back pages have been tracking the progress of the outspoken mammoth as he seeks dishonour and fame simultaneously.

Last Tuesday the San Francisco Giants slugger etched his name in the record books as he broke the most hallowed record in American sports. He has now smashed more home runs than any other being. Every headline, except in his home town, has labelled him as a fraud. The “Playground is Poisoned” is how the outspoken yet baseball crazed Miami Herald described the occasion.

Barry Bonds is an enormous, controversial figure who, for years, has been labelled a drug cheat. In 1986 he was a wiry leadoff hitter with Pittsburg. Fast forward to today where he is now considered a cheat wearing a crown who has puffed up like an inflatable raft.

In a matter of years, fearing that the ‘assisted’ dubious power feats of Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire would relegate him to the back benches, his shirt size ballooned from 42” to 52”. His shoe size has burst from 10 and a half to size 13. His cap size went from 7 and one eighth to 7 and three quarters. This does not happen by eating three shredded wheats for breakfast! That transformation is at the heart of many accusers.

Bonds has been booed at bat by all and sundry this season. He has been subjected to stadium protesters holding asterisk cards suggesting his records require that additional appendage denoting drug tainted performances.

Hypodermic needles have also at times littered the playing field following well-coordinated launches from the bleachers intended to mock him.

He has always denied intentionally taking steroids but centre to the problem is that astoundingly drug testing is not a prerequisite in baseball.

Bonds has another problem. He is not considered a nice person. He is liberally described as selfish, arrogant, entitled, self centered, rude and surly. He is now possibly fraudulent. We all know that a little bit of nice can certainly go a long way in today’s media-frenzied sports world.

A feeble commission implicating Bonds is under way at the moment to delve into this scourge that has permanently damaged the game but it is generally considered that it will be struck out. It does have a casualty though. Barry Bonds’s personal trainer is locked up in jail for refusing to testify against him.

Barry Bonds is a sad figure in the mind of many…. a sad monstrous figure in denial. Although he has eclipsed the record of 755 home runs held by the likeable Hank Aaron, who, in turn, secured it from the legendary Babe Ruth in 1974, baseball’s integrity and soul is now in jeopardy.

Even though this prestigious record is now firmly bonded, it is presumed guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

No longer can the extraordinary feats of Babe Ruth, Joe Di Maggio, Mickey Mantle and Barry Bonds’s notoriety be debated from the same base. The eras have no common ground.

The playground is poisoned.