Bestow it to the Hall of Fame. The other options are, in their rather obvious way, sort of clever. Kind of. But whatever your views, the ball is a part of baseball history. It belongs in Cooperstown where it will be all of ours to make of what we will.
If you bothered to read beyond the Bonds expose and the circus of congressional hearings in 2005, you would have learned that steroids have been used by baseball players as far back as at least the mid 80s, that by 1991, baseball officials were alarmed enough to add steroids to a list of banned substances sent to all teams, and that even with new testing procedures in place since those hearings, any player who wants to enhance can likely do so with little chance of being caught. But most sportswriters and columnists went back to the safest route: blaming the few, extolling the virtues of the game, finding solace in building up new heroes to replace the fallen ones.
Bonds's real sin, in the end, is in making that so difficult. As he continued his assault on Aaron's record, passing Ruth in the bargain, he was a constant, irritating reminder of the shortcomings of the church of baseball, and especially of its priests in the press. And so he had to be punished. Again and again and again.
Won't we all be relieved when it's finally over.
I most appreciate Hoenig's rather pointed dig at the journalists who have consistently led the holier-than-thou brigade. The chase is done, though the recriminations have just begun. The self-righteous await hopefully ARod taking the record away, because they who remained willfully blind suddenly have decided that ARod was never part of the scandal they never saw when it was happening yet see so clearly in outrage-fueled hindsight.
Look, we do not know who did what when. We do not know enough because Major League Baseball -- players, owners, the league -- did not want to know. Even if Bonds broke the law, it is highly doubtful whether or not he broke any of baseball's rules.
And don't give me this nonsense about the plausibility of Bonds growing in size as he aged. Every athlete, every guy, gets bulkier as he gets older. And the only people who argue against the possibility of gains in muscle mass as someone gets older have never spent any time in a weight room.
The most bothersome aspect of the Bonds situation is the rampant hypocrisy and the self-righteousness of it all. Barry Bonds is the greatest baseball player you have ever seen play the game. He may be unlikeable, and of course we may learn more than we now know about the steroids mess. But it is a mess to which baseball (and journalists) turned a blind eye. Post-facto hand wringing and finger waving does not change anything.
Still, the baseball card mock-up is pretty funny. Insensitive, crude, and unfair, but funny.
Hat tip to My Colleague, Chemistry Kyle.
