Baseball’s greatest slugger is a disgraced and convicted felon.
Barry Bonds was found guilty in a California courtroom on Wednesday for obstructing justice in a long-running U.S. government probe into the use of performance-enhancing drugs in sport. He could be jailed for up to 10 years, but that seems unlikely.
The jury in Bonds’ trial was deadlocked on three other criminal charges, including perjury. Those charges could be renewed in a second trial before a different jury.
At this point, however, it doesn’t really matter.
Testimony at his trial, and widespread reporting leading up to it, have revealed Bonds to be a pretty despicable man.
He grew up the son of a talented and beloved baseball player, Bobby Bonds. Barry had massive baseball talent, but an even bigger ego and sense of entitlement.
When he played college baseball in Arizona, he infuriated teammates so much that they wanted him kicked off the team. The manager allowed them to vote, thinking the players would never ruin their season by expelling their most dominant player. When they voted him out, the manager insisted that they vote again, differently this time.
As a young professional in Pittsburgh, Bonds ticked off his aging manager so much by refusing to take part in a team photo that he tried to punch out his top star.
In San Francisco, Bonds, the team’s biggest drawing card, commandeered one corner of the clubhouse for himself, installing a big-screen TV and large leather chair, facing away from all his teammates. One year, when he received advance notice that a teammate, Jeff Kent, would be named the league’s most valuable player rather than him, Bonds arranged to be out of town and unavailable for media interviews that day.
Bonds, however, was a great talent, and much was forgiven.
When he passed the age of 30 and his baseball skills began to fade — as they do for all professional athletes — Bonds began taking steroids to build up his muscles and hit more home runs.
He saw how the stars across the bay in Oakland — Mark McGwire and Jose Canseco — were becoming huge physical specimens by lifting weights, taking anabolic steroids, then hitting tape-measure home runs. Bonds got seriously on the juice.
Major League Baseball management must have known what was happening, but turned a blind eye. Baseball had lost its supremacy in the American sporting pantheon to professional football, while basketball was also gaining ground.
Rancorous labour relations between baseball franchises and their unionized players led to work stoppages and angry fans turning away from the game. Home-run races lured them back in droves.
McGwire and another notorious steroid user, Sammy Sosa, led the charge. McGwire set a new single-season record, hitting 70 homers in 1998. In 2001, Bonds hit 73.
Six years later, Bonds hit his 756th career home run, surpassing the legendary Hank Aaron.
By then, however, the steroid story had been fully explored and Bonds’ new mark was widely seen as fraudulent. Major League Baseball came reluctantly and belatedly to the idea that it had to reform.
That happened only when Congress decided to get involved after teenage boys, anxious to follow the path of their sports heroes, began taking steroids — and committing suicide in alarming numbers.
Depression is a common, tragic side-effect of steroid use.
It’s easy to see the attractions of performance-enhancing drugs to impressionable young athletes. Expanded television coverage and new media platforms have made sports massively popular and its best players very rich.
Two generations ago, pro athletes were working stiffs who took second jobs in their off-season to pay the family bills. Nowadays, mediocre players are millionaires.
The best or most charismatic athletes can make as much money from their celebrity status as from their exploits on the playing field. And some celebrities have come to believe they are great because they are famous, rather than the other way round.
These days, Charlie Sheen is better known for his network-slagging rants than for his acting talent.
He’s heading the way of Lindsay Lohan, who used to be a tremendous young actress, but is now virtually unemployable and uninsurable for her relentless pursuit of the celebrity/party lifestyle.
Bonds does not fit into the celebrity mold. He’s sullen, sour and seems increasingly isolated.
Luckily, he does have one staunch friend from his childhood, Greg Anderson, who has helped keep him out of prison. Anderson is in jail himself, for contempt of court, after repeatedly refusing to testify against Bonds.
Anderson was Bonds’ personal trainer. He also supplied and injected numerous other athletes with steroids. All of them knew what they were taking and anxious for the power-producing effects of those drugs.
Bonds alone remains in denial, claiming that he believed Anderson’s drugs were only flaxseed oil or a cream to treat arthritis.
Bonds alone.
It’s a fitting image, preferably in a prison cell for a considerable time.
Joe McLaughlin is the retired former managing editor of the Red Deer Advocate.