Hey, maybe y’all missed it. There’s this guy chasing history.
And maybe you’ve heard of him, his name is Barry Bonds. He’s this baseball player on a team that plays in San Francisco. Pretty damn good ballplayer, too.
Why does no one care? Barry Bonds is chasing one of baseball’s most fun records. He’s been smashing dinger after dinger into oblivion, and a decent amount of them have been landing in the San Francisco Bay. Land masses can’t even hold this guy anymore. Barry’s shots these days are bound for McCovey Cove, a nice little place to fish if you don’t mind getting pelted with moonshot baseballs. Not that anyone cares.
Bonds has four games left after last night to break the record. Nobody gives a fig. Even though Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were everyone’s buddies three seasons ago when they went head to head to break the very same record, no one wants to give Barry more than a second sniff.
I think I know why. Barry’s got this reputation, you see. He’s never killed anyone, but people don’t like Barry. It’s something about him needing an attitude adjustment. A lot of people don’t think Barry is worthy of breaking a record that has names like Maris, Ruth, and McGwire attached to it. “Too much of a jerk,” people, specifically sportswriters intent on souring the general public toward him, grumble.
Why is that? Bonds has a personality quirk that bothers people. It’s called individuality. A lot of people don’t like Barry Bonds because he acts with personality on the field. If he hits a monster homerun, he admires it on its way out. If the other team cracks a dinger over his head while he’s playing the field, he acknowledges it by, well, not acknowledging it. He doesn’t even turn to see where the ball is going to go, and that tends to occasionally ruffle some feathers. Personally, I find the habit pretty darn amusing. It’s a form of showmanship, let it be. Baseball shouldn’t be bland.
Barry irritates sportswriters by blowing them off from time to time. The sportswriters in turn irritate sports fans with exaggerations of how much of a jerk Bonds is. In the end, the result is that a lot of people do not really understand or like Barry Bonds at all. You know what? Day after day, I’d get sick of them paisley little sportswriter vultures, too. “Go stick your microphone somewhere else, already,” Bonds’s face says. “I gotta go meet my family.”
I have a hard time faulting the guy. My face would say worse.
All of my life, I have been taught that people should be judged on the merits of two things: their character and their work ethic. Barry’s got them both. As his body has aged through more than sixteen major league level seasons he’s developed and made the necessary adjustments to remain successful. That’s not fluke, that’s hard work. As a rookie in 1986, 180-pound Barry Bonds spent a fair amount of time as a speedy lead-off hitter. He could fly around the bases back in the day. This year, he’s a hulking 225-pound beast. Rather than becoming a fat, slow, Tony-Gwynn-kind-of slap hitter, he beefed up and started mashing the snot out of baseballs. It didn’t happen over night, and it took a lot of hard work to do it. Give Barry some props, whether you like him or not. The jerk’s a hard worker, sorry to say.
As for his character, there’s little negative that can be said. With Barry, it’s the things that no one HAS heard that make the difference. He’s never been in the news for molesting teenage girls, like Anthony Mason. He’s never been before a court of law for cocaine possession, like Darryl Strawberry. And he has most certainly never had his hysterical wife call 911 while she tries to keep him from beating her in a drunken rage, like countless other meathead athletes/politicians/rock stars. How bad of a guy can he be? It’s been reported in Sports Illustrated that he loves having goofy conversations with his kids via AOL Instant Messenger. What self-respecting man without a heart would do that?
So what, Barry Bonds is a little bit sour. He’s like the grumpy uncle that you know deep down would love to take you fishing on Saturday morning if you just ask. He’s the joyful Uncle Scrooge at the end of A Christmas Carol that is trying to hide the toys that he bought Tiny Tim because he doesn’t want to seem to soft. Barry Bonds may be a little gruff and a little arrogant. But he’s a decent dude. Root for him this weekend. You might even see the jerk crack a smile.
