Media treatment of Bonds has been foolish

Mark Whicker has got it right in his article below. He should be applauded for outing the many foolish people in the world of sports journalism. It's shameful how some reporters have singled out and viciously attacked Bonds. Bonds didn't kill or rape anybody, but that's how he as been treated by the much of the media. No matter what reporters write about Bonds, he just keeps on keeping on. 759 and counting.


Media treatment of Bonds has been foolish
New York Times, ESPN, Sports Illustrated guilty of making him the devil

By Mark Whicker
The Orange County Register
August 15, 2007

Only 81 hits until the next Barry Bonds commemoration. Don't ask why. Ask where.

The home run record holder probably won't be waddling in the San Francisco outfield next year, but someone will sign him. Bonds has a 1.073 OPS, which combines slugging percentage and on-base percentage. That leads everyone in baseball, Alex Rodriguez included.

Bonds, with 24, is tied for 13th in major-league home runs, and he and Milwaukee rookie Ryan Braun are the only players to hit at least 20 in fewer than 300 at bats. It doesn't even matter that the victims of home runs 754 through 757 were Rick VandenHurk, Clay Hensley, Mike Bacsik and Tim Redding. Managers fear him, and the apprehension spreads to the pitchers. This oblong fellow is the only player in baseball with more than 100 walks. At 43.

Bonds will be the designated hitter for some American League team next season. The Yankees come to mind. So does Detroit, with Bonds' favorite manager, Jim Leyland. One doubts it will be the Angels. But don't you have to make the call?

Bonds won't come cheap. Even this ballooned version of himself is making $15.8 million in base salary and is already costing the Giants $2.5 million in incentives, based on plate appearances. But you'd rather have Bonds than Sammy Sosa.

Bonds ranks 35th in all-time hits. Roberto Clemente is 23rd, with 3,000. Bonds, Derek Jeter (who needs 700) and Rodriguez (809) are the real candidates.

Bonds certainly has a better chance at 3,000 than he does at being spared all the concomitant moralizing. What will be the next chorus? His singles are going farther? He uses the human growth hormone to land pop flies in between the shortstop and left-fielder? Nothing would surprise.

The only surprise was that tap water still flowed, stoplights still worked, and not all credit cards were canceled on the night that Bonds broke his home run tie with the suddenly sainted Henry Aaron.

Newspapers kept publishing, too. Even the New York Times, which ran this astonishing sentence: "His distorted immortality is lab made."

Must have been an evil chemist's basement that produced the lithe and explosive outfielder who won three MVP awards, beginning in 1990?

Must be a fairly terrific lab, considering all the verified drug cheats whose career home runs barely equal a good Bonds month.

Must be a groundbreaking lab indeed, to equip Bonds with the strike zone knowledge and the intelligence to hit all those home runs in a park where no Home Run Derby contestant, during the All-Star Game, managed to wham a baseball into McCovey Cove.

And, of course, no pitchers visited the same lab.

Another writer from Jayson Blair's and Judith Miller's alma mater drew the now-familiar link from whatever Bonds did to whatever Michael Vick did to whatever Tim Donaghy did, and lamented the lack of virtue in our sports culture.

This same ethicist was a member of the Harding Three —a trio of journalists, who, at the 1992 Winter Olympics, enlarged a photo of Tonya Harding's credential in order to steal her ID and hack into her e-mail account.

But it's not just the papers.

ESPN conveniently held a Town Meeting so that Americans could somehow find a way to continue living if Bonds hit No. 756. Apparently global warming and bad schools are no longer serious problems.

Sports Illustrated's Rick Reilly, apparently out of screenplays to plug, advised readers on how to deal with Bonds' record, as if it carried bubonic plague.

Deal with it however you like. But don't lump it with everything else that's happening in our Summer of Sin.

First, remember the core American value: presumption of innocence. Neither Bonds, Vick nor Donaghy have been convicted of anything. Some journalists, myself included, have skipped that principle at times. But the Duke lacrosse case should have cured that.

Speaking hypothetically, a referee who fixes games destroys the foundation of his sport and makes its side issues meaningless. Who cares where Kevin Garnett plays if you can't trust the charge-block calls?

A quarterback who organizes killer dogfights gives a sick new twist to the NFL culture of lawlessness, one that new Commissioner Roger Goodell is actually trying to reverse.

And a left fielder who takes steroids to catch Mark McGwire, the Ghost of Shady Canyon, who, lest we forget, was openly taking andro in the year he hit 70 home runs?

It's a stupid health decision and it's a loathsome message to the kids.

It also wasn't illegal in baseball until recently, and it has more in common with corked bats and spitballs than it does with fixed basketball games and cruelty to canines.

And corked bats and spitballs might just enhance performance more than drugs actually produce home runs.

Meanwhile, Bonds turns his lonely eyes to 3,000. Look on the bright side. With each day in the big leagues, he delays the Hall of Fame induction.

 

Pretty damn good column right there.
I'm interested in the Tonya Harding thing. Seems pretty unprofessional to me. Did those journalists get in trouble for hacking into her e-mail?

 

That's a nice job pointing out Donaghy hasn't been convicted of anything when it was reported before this column published that he was going to plead guilty on the morning your column ran.

And what the hell did you expect ESPN to do? Hold one of the Republican debates?

Also nice to continue the fallacy that it wasn't illegal for him to be taking performance enhancers when it has continually been shown that it was.

This column could be worth a damn if it didn't have so many gaping holes.

 

I'm so tired of the argument that this column uses: that if steroids help you hit, where are all the other 73-home run seasons.

No one is denying Barry Bonds' talent. He is obviously a hitter of amazing talent. But steroids could have been a big part in his ability to hit the ball a little farther and recover from injuries a little quicker. He was already a hall of fame player, but steroids might have pushed him to superhuman heights.

 

I agree. And Barry Bonds can eat my duckbutter.

 

Whicker is full of it.

And do we have to go through all this, for the 27,369th time?

 

This has always been something that has bugged me. Even after the news of today, this LeBatardist poseur can continue to say Donaghy still has never been convicted of anything -- thanks to his plea, he's now an admitted felon. Yet technically, not a convicted one.

And this really has me curious about what Sportsbruh and his ilk will write should Vick cop a plea -- who wants to bet those apologists pounce on the "he was never convicted" angle?

 

Not nearly as foolish as those who continue to cry about the treatment of Bonds on message boards.

Creamora, don't you have a mirror in which to pose? Or some "suntan lotion" to apply? Or a moustache to carefully trim?

 

BYH,

Nothing you suggest is nearly as rewarding as posting here and reading the wonderful responses. This place is really great! It gives me the opportunity to contribute to a good cause. Being able to come here and provide efficacious treatment for hater-itis makes me feel like I'm making a contribution to the world.

 

You aren't.

 

Whicker is the most overrated columnist in the country, and this column is a great example of why.