Did you know that Mark Ecko, the fashion designer, bought Barry Bond's Hank Aaron 756th homerun ball?
Ecko then set up a site for people to vote on what to do with the ball. The options were:
- Send the ball to Cooperstown as is, where it'd be inducted into the Hall of Fame.
- Mark the ball with an asterisk, signifying the cloud of doubt on the issue of whether Bond's used steroids was deliberate, and then send to Cooperstown for admission.
- Send the ball into space, and effectively banishing it.
The fact that he bitched and moaned and whined about how everyone was trying to tear him down even before the steroid issue didn't exactly make him a likable figure in the game, and once all the issues about "the clear and the cream" came out and he went on the defensive to purport his innocence (he said he didn't know they were steroids) and reiterated that people were trying to bring him down just like they did his dad it didn't really help sweeten his image.
What if he had exerted a little more energy to be a "likable" guy...maybe hired some spin doctors? It's not like he wasn't a capable athlete. Would there had been such a controversy? Maybe, but had he been a 'lovable rogue who was out there playing the game the way he meant to', I bet Mark Ecko would've never bought the ball, and there wouldn't have been such a stink about the matter. We still might've had the steroid investigations and the banning of performance enhancement substances in the MLB, but Bonds would probably have gotten to stay with the Giants...now he gets to wrap up his career as he lived it: bitterly.
Barry never had a Sosa to help him spin this (or split the blame). It's simply the media's turn to stomp on Barry after 756 - he's always treated them like isht. In the end, he's such an insular personality that he believes himself when saying he doesn't care about his image and I buy it. There are greater injustices in the world and definitely in baseball. He's simply the best one to do it. We'll find that many more athletes will come down the line as suspects (Clemens is the jewel for me) and we'll get so used to it that one point, in our children's generations, it will be status quo in all of athletics. Look at football; Merriman's Nike commercial has no twinge of shame - AND HE WAS SUSPENDED. I know, baseball is tradition, Ruth/Aaron were gentleman (not buying that of Babe, the media were in baseball's back pocket, just like politics) and football is less noble than baseball.
ReplyDeleteJust wait, we've all been complicit and BB is simply the scapegoat. BALCO isn't even the beginning; just look across the bay at those brothers 'a bashing.
Who would have guessed that Jose Canseco is steroid's Deep Throat?
BTW - Barry ain't going away like this, he's waiting for the other shoe to drop so he can lord over it in front of his locker post-game.
He's going to DH for 3 or so years, going after Josh Gibson and Sadaharu Oh. Which team? Anaheim(if they trade Garrett - he's on a tear, could be attractive to NYY), Detroit(if Leyland comes back and he makes up w/ Sheff) or CWS(Why not?). He'll never go to NY or Boston, that much I know.
I will miss that crazy man playing for my team...