Giving Barry His Due
April 28th, 2006Barry Bonds. Media goes “Wah… Barry won’t talk to reporters again” or “Barry was mean to me” and I’m just worn out by the steroid thing. Enough already. Politicians have already gotten involved to help “save” our national past time. Well drugs are not ruining our sport. Now if you were to say greed and corruption I might buy into it. If you were to blame the masses that demand greatness I would certainly consider it. But drugs? Well there is one thing everyone seems to forget and I almost never hear mentioned. No matter what drugs you are taking to make yourself a better athlete, no matter what you do on your own time: you still have to hit the damn ball. Reflexes, bat speed, eye, coordination.
What does it take to be a major leaguer? Say you have 3000 major league players and the population of the country is 300,000,000. Maybe add a few thousand who could do it but have not gotten the opportunity or opted to travel a different path. I can’t even figure the percentage without scientific notation (which then becomes useless and incomprehensible to me). Let’s say better than 99.999% of the populace. Not even 1 in a million… more like 1 in 299,000,000 make the grade. That’s your basic requirement to be a pro.
That is the way it is with all professional sports. It’s a human lottery. I spent years studying relative stats and there are only a handful of players that so dominated their sport that they stood head and shoulders above everyone else. In a sport that already produced the very best of the entire country these players were far beyond even “the best of the rest”. Babe Ruth, Ted Williams. Barry Bonds. Maybe they are almost worthy of the adulation that they commanded while at their pinnacle of performance.
So you must be better than 99% of the country. You must do this every day for a long time. You must have consistency and perseverance. You must have sufficient dimensions to your game to compensate for deteriorating skills as you grow older. You are competing against younger athletes as you stay in the league longer. Reaching the top and staying there is an arduous, ultimately doomed, task. You must commit to conditioning and taking care of your body like you’ve never done before.
“If Rome falls it won’t because our gladiators let us down by seeking to be the best at their specialties. It will be because of our misplaced worship, the idols we choose to deify.”
If anything, one should feel sympathy for the athletes that consume performance-enhancing drugs. They have made the ultimate sacrifice in their quest for perfection. Because what of the long-term health factors? Do we even know the long-term consequences of the newer miracle drugs? I thought that after watching the quick downward spiral that Lyle Alzado’s life took that we might assume that this obsessive pursuit may not be completely safe. Are the new drugs that much safer? Would I trust them in my own body?
If Rome falls it won’t because our gladiators let us down by seeking to be the best at their specialties. It will be because of our misplaced worship, the idols we choose to deify. Our warriors must seek an edge… because we demand it. Our champions must leave no doubt in anyone’s mind that they are equal to none, superior to all before and since. There is nothing new to any of this. For thousands of years we have had our champions—they were the best horse thieves, the bravest in battle, the most cunning and ruthless. The requirements have been nothing short of invincibility. Well let me give you a little clue. There is no such thing. Man is man and man is beast. Man and beast grow old and suffer and die. Gloriously or infamously. And the achievements on battlefield or playing field become a fading history as the years slide by. Some achievements, by their supposed (imagined or real) magnificence, live longer than others. Some are magnified by their decadence or debauchery. But they are the past and they become asterisks and footnotes. And all together they will never add one dim star to the night sky.
So let’s not make Barry Bonds a god. But it’s ok to give him his due. I can’t tell you how much satisfaction I’ve gotten from watching him. There was a time when a pitcher would try to get a fastball by him and he would, nearly without fail, turn on it and pull it. How many times did I see that? I would say aloud: “You better not try it”. But some cocky young hurler always thinks his fastball is that much better than anyone else’s. And throws it. And it is driven. Pulled even. He doesn’t have to hit it over the centerfield wall. When your bat is quick enough to get around on a mid-90’s heater, you can hit it out with or without steroids.
I read the excerpts from Shadows Of Darkness. Didn’t do much for me. Some find it incredulous that a player passes his prime years (27-29 are the generally accepted numbers) and suddenly takes his career to a new level. The thing that people aren’t talking about is that players frequently gain power as they head into their sunset years; most of the time their averages suffer. Bonds hasn’t suffered from this decline because he sees the ball better than any other player in the game and his knowledge of the strike zone is so superior to others.
It is obvious that Sports Illustrated doesn’t like Barry Bonds. I would imagine that he refused to talk to one of their people at some time or hurt their feelings in some way. While reading the readers’ letters I marveled at the amount of hate. I marveled that SI reprinted some of the drivel about shunning Bonds, walking him every at bat, fans turning their backs on him when he homers. You know what? People didn’t like Ty Cobb either. I don’t like Ty Cobb. You think he would have cared? I would guess that if I were to walk up to Bonds and demand an interview or story that he would make me feel small in some way. Know what? I don’t care. He occupies a different spot in the world and I don’t envy it and I’m not conceding in the smallest way that his is better than mine. Nor do I care if it is. I don’t have to like him. But I must admire his accomplishments.