Written by: O

Let me start off by saying that I am a San Francisco Giants fan.  I have been one for years now, going back to when Joe Morgan was playing and Frank Robinson was managing the Giants.  In 1993, the Giants brought Barry Bonds to San Francisco and he responded with a MVP season.  Bonds went on to become one of the greatest players to ever play baseball and last season Bonds became the all-time home run king by passing Hank Aaron’s 755 home runs.  Today, Bonds has not retired, but he is not currently on a team and no one has picked him up.  How in the world does that happen?

The excuses are so pathetic that it is utter and complete nonsense to even repeat them, but for information sake, here goes.  The main excuse is that he would be a distraction for the team.  For what team and what distraction?  Bonds has only played for two teams in his career, the Pittsburgh Pirates and the San Francisco Giants, and the only distractions he was for those teams were of a positive nature because those teams have not been nearly as successful since he has left.  Some say that he should not be back in baseball because his name is linked to steroids and it tarnishes the game.  Well, I do not see anyone having a problem with Andy Petitte or Jason Giambi playing on the same team together and both of their names are also linked to steroids.  There are also those who say that Bonds’ personality would ruin a team’s chemistry.  We still have no evidence that he was ever the reason for a team’s downfall and while there are definitely players who do not like Bonds, what player does everyone like?

All of the excuses stem simply from the fact that most people do not like Barry Bonds.  They will use any excuse to keep him away from the game so that he does not keep the home run title for very long or do anything else on the playing field that will increase his standing in the game.  I find this absolutely insane.  The object in major league baseball is to win games, not to be popular, so why in the world is one of the game’s greatest players to ever play the game not playing?

I would also like to include my comrades in sportswriting who have done maybe the greatest hatchet job in the history of baseball and that takes a lot of doing.  When Brett Favre retired and then un-retired, every writer across the land wrote about it and it was the biggest story throughout the summer.  Yet, Barry Bonds, who starred just last year and hit 28 home runs, has been ignored and given no credit for his ability and all that he has done in the game.  Who cares if Bonds did not treat the media well?  That is not a job requirement, hitting the baseball is, and you would have trouble finding anyone who has ever done it as well as Barry Bonds.

Tags: Barry Bonds, baseball, home run king

This entry was posted on Friday, August 15th, 2008 at 12:00 am and is filed under Random Buzz. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.