Bonds Indicted But Bonds Was Targeted By Fans, Selig, And Congress Alike

It seems as if baseball fans across the nation are using and abusing the amendments. While a fan has every right to express their opinion, thanks to the freedom of speech, they seem to forget that a person is also innocent until proven guilty?

Barry Lamar Bonds is arguably the most talented athlete to ever lace up a pair of cleats and play in America’s Favorite Pastime. However, his accomplishments are tainted with bad press, his attitude, but more importantly, with the dark cloud hovering over baseball over the past decade – steroid allegations, which he has now been indicted for lying about not knowing about taking performance enhancing drugs.

Jose Canseco came out and admitted to taking steroids in his playing days and tried to take everybody in baseball down with him, accusing Bonds and many other superstars of taking steroids, in his book “Juiced.”

Bonds was also accused of taking steroids in the book “Game of Shadows,” where he was said to be jealous of the homerun chase back in 1998 between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa.

Whether this is true or fictional, the fact of the matter is that Bonds put up some of the most impressive numbers in the history of major league baseball.

Bonds is 14 games shy of his 3,000 game. He is the current homerun king with 762, passing the infamous 755 homeruns Hank Aaron posted in years past, and once considered an impossible feat.

Bonds is the only 500/500 ballplayer, has drawn more walks and more intentional base on balls as well, with 2,426 and 645 respectively.

As long as Bonds stays healthy and plays again in 2008, he will get 65 hits to join the 3,000 hit club and only needs to drive in four more RBI’s for 2,000.

However, the 8 time gold glover, 13 time All-Star, who holds more Most Valuable Player (MVP) Awards than anyone with 7, having won 4 consecutive years, where the most MVP’s by any other player is three, is still not believed to be the real deal as it has been questioned how a ballplayer got significantly better with age.

His 756 homerun ball is even being threatened to have an asterisk branded on it and Bonds is jeered everywhere he goes except his home ballpark in San Francisco, where his tenure has officially ended.

Bonds swore in front of congress that he never intentionally used performance enhancing drugs. Maybe he was telling the truth, maybe he was not - time will tell. One question to keep in mind is if anyone really cares.

If people really cared, why wasn’t the steroid situation dealt with sooner. In all likelihood Commissioner Bud Selig looked at the growing steroid situation with a blind eye as after the 1994 strike people were finally coming back to the baseball stadiums which was potentially ignited by the McGwire and Sosa show, as they battled each other for the single season homerun record back in 1998.

Where was the freedom of speech being used then? Where were the thousands of jeering fans holding asterisks in the faces of McGwire and Sosa back in 1998? The fans didn’t decide to use their freedom of speech probably because “Big Mac” and Slammin Sammy were beloved figures and icons.

Whether fans like it or not, since they did not invoke their voices then, they have to deal with a controversial figure in Bonds as the homerun king and one of the best players to play on the same field as Mickey Mantle, Babe Ruth, Ted Wiliams, Willie Mays, Hank Aaron, and more recently, the likes of Alex Rodriguez, Albert Pujols, Roger Clemens and alike.

Bonds will in all likelihood be in Cooperstown one day as a Hall of Famer, but the fans will once again invoke their right to speech and make and have made it quite clear that he is not.

However, while fans may not believe in Bonds, there is one place where they can not voice their opinion and that is in the record books - unless proven guilty and Comissioner Bud Selig -who has turned his head, until now, towards the steroid use in baseball since homeruns were putting butts back in the seats after the 1995 strike - wipes out his records or puts an asterisk next to Bonds' accomplishments.

Fact of the matter is that Bonds has been a target over the past several years - whether from the fans, the investigators, or Selig himself who seemed to be against Bonds from the start.