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Barry Bonds passed Babe Ruth for second place on the all-time home run list--yet serious allegations suggest he reached that milestone by taking steroids. Has fan reaction been justified? |
I am going to meet the greatest umpire of all--and He knows I am innocent. --Joe Jackson
ay it ain't so, Joe," history has a young boy pleading to Shoeless Joe Jackson as the baseball player left the courthouse during the "Black Sox" scandal trial of 1919.
Chicago Daily News writer Charles Owens reported the child's innocently immortal line.
The truth is that the words were never uttered. That little piece of American lore was part of the mythmaking of early 20th-century sportswriting.
"It just didn't happen," Jackson told Sport Magazine in 1948. "Charley Owens just made up a good story and wrote it. Oh, I would have said it ain't so, just like I'm saying it now."
The sentiment was real, though. People didn't want to believe Jackson was guilty of conspiring to help gamblers fix the World Series. They still don't, almost 90 years later. The movie "Field of Dreams" was based on that premise.
But most of us seem eager to believe the worst about today's stars, such as baseball's Barry Bonds and Tour de France winner Floyd Landis. There's something perversely satisfying about it.
Today, presuming innocence until proved guilty isn't the American way.
It's the sap way.
In the Old Testament, public stoning is recommended as the means of execution for crimes such as murder, blasphemy, and apostasy.
Today, it seems to have been prescribed for the crime of having big biceps and a bad personality.
So far, those are the only infractions of which Bonds, alleged steroids user, can be proved guilty. And it's seeming more and more likely that, despite a ridiculous amount of effort by the federal government, he might never be convicted of anything more.
This is the same government that recently disbanded a unit assigned to go after Osama bin Laden. But the pursuit of Public Enemy No. 1, Barry Bonds--the most hated man in America--continues.
The feds are about to convene yet another Bonds grand jury, continuing three years of fruitless efforts to nail a baseball player who allegedly took an anti-inflammatory drug so he could work out harder.
Apparently, those muscles make Bonds a bigger threat to America than the skinny bin Laden. Watch out. Bonds might kick sand in America's face at the beach.
Good to know. I'll keep my children far away from San Francisco. Maybe we'll go on vacation to the Pakistan-Afghanistan border instead.
See, Bonds is a better target because he's easier to find than bin Laden. All you have to do is look at a baseball schedule.
And he's politically unpopular, thanks to years of sports reporters and newscasters saying he's a steroids user without bothering to use the word "alleged." San Francisco newspaper columnists have unabashedly told Giants fans they're fools for applying the concept of "innocent till proved guilty" and cheering for their hero.
We may never know whether Bonds actually used steroids.
But what's going on here says something far more important about us than it does about him.
Astros pitcher Russ Springer threw five pitches at Bonds in one at-bat this season in Houston. When the fifth pitch crumpled Bonds, 30,000 Texas fans gave Springer a standing ovation as the umpire ejected him.
When Bonds fouled a ball off his foot in Pittsburgh and writhed in pain, there was another ovation.
One Pirates announcer said said that reaction was to be expected. The other disagreed, asserting that it was "cheap" behavior.
No, not cheap. Morally bankrupt.
Some parents are concerned their children will emulate Bonds' alleged steroids use. And Major League Baseball is worried that concern will damage attendance and lower TV ratings.
As a lifelong baseball fan, my worry is trying to teach my children to love the game as thousands barbarically cheer when someone they don't like gets hurt. That kind of ugliness is something I've never seen before in baseball.
An ongoing media lynching of Bonds is fueling fan behavior that might very well turn me and my family away from the sport.
Something's wrong here, and it might not end when Bonds retires. A line is being crossed and a precedent set. In the future it will be much easier for things to get ugly--really ugly--in big-league baseball parks when a player is unpopular.
Anyway, aren't there more important problems--and bigger bogeymen--to worry about?
U.S. Rep. Jose Serrano, a New York Democrat who lived for years in North Stafford and whose son John played baseball at Brooke Point High School, has said protecting America's pastime from steroids is like defending the Statue of Liberty from terrorists.
Maybe so.
But assuming steroids actually do help hitters, and assuming Bonds actually did take them, why make one player a scapegoat?
A few have said people are treating Bonds differently because of his race--that Bonds is a big, scary black man and most sportswriters are white.
But Landis is white and he, too, has been getting run out of town on a rail--even though there seems to be some doubt about his guilt.
Maybe it's all celebrity schadenfreude--deriving pleasure from seeing the mighty suffer.
At least part of the treatment of Bonds is about protecting the myth of Babe Ruth's personality after Bonds passed him on the all-time home run list.
No, the Babe didn't use steroids.
The Babe wasn't exactly the type who would ever have lifted a weight. Steroids would have allowed him only to raise more beers and heft more hot dogs
But what this really comes down to is that we prefer the old-time newspapermen's sanitized, airbrushed portrait of Ruth to the 24-hour, all-warts-all-the-time cable news version of Bonds.
Because in the Babe's day, mythology sold papers.
Today, outrage gets TV ratings.
Somewhere between those two extremes is truth.
By the way, Shoeless Joe Jackson was acquitted in court.
Then he was banned from baseball for life.
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MICHAEL ZITZ is a writer for The Free Lance-Star. Staff researcher CRAIG SCHULIN contributed to this column. |
