Barry Bonds has been sentenced for obstruction of justice but where does he fit in baseball's hall of shame?
Imagine you're Dante constructing the nine On-deck Circles of Baseball Hell. Where do you place Barry Bonds, who avoided jail for his obstruction of justice conviction last April in the BALCO case?
Let us count the sins.
While Bonds' juicing surely warrants a spot in my infernal lineup, he'd find himself in an awfully crowded level with that pop-fly peccadillo?call it Vanity. (By my count, at least ten former MVPs have also been implicated in PED scandals, including the now ironically named Ryan Braun.)
What compounds Bonds' transgression, of course, is that he lied about it. (Dante considered that circle Fraud, which, for those keeping score at home, he had batting eighth.) And if Watergate, Martha Stewart, and 20 minutes in kindergarten have taught us anything, it's that the cover-up is always worse than the crime.
Once again though, plenty of players have lied about taking steroids, but most were smart about who they lied to. You want to tell ESPN or Bob Costas or even 60 Minutes that you never touched the stuff, have it. But when you lie under oath, they will try to throw the book at you, high and tight. (In politics, it's the equivalent of Bill Clinton wagging his finger at the media in January 1998, claiming he "did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky," and then admitting in a videotaped deposition eight months later that he had "an improper physical relationship" with his frisky human humidor.)
For me, however, what's most vexing about Bonds is that he was blessed with Hall of Fame talent before he took steroids. The numbers were there, but Barry wanted more. (Please rise for?Avarice.) Then in 1998, as he watched Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa chase Roger Maris' record of 61 home runs in a single season, his massive ego could not be contained in his then still human-sized head. (Now batting for Bonds?Envy.) Three seasons later, and Barry had devoured Unnaturally Big Mac's record with 73 home runs in a season, and then he set his eyes on the ultimate prize?passing his godfather Willie Mays, Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron to become the all-tome home run king. Would he have been top five without a little help from his friends at BALCO? Probably. A few years ago, ESPN.com estimated that Bonds actually hit 616 legitimate dingers in his career.
Add those sins up and you're left with the big one?Pride. Bonds thought that by lying about "the Clear" he'd end up in it, and now he's a convicted felon who may never get to write those three hallowed letters after his autograph: HOF?Hall of Fame. Had he simply told the truth to the BALCO grand jury back in the day?as, say, Andy Pettitte did when he was testifying in another case in 2010?Bonds might have found himself shamed but on the same basepath to forgiveness that McGwire's now on. (And even if McGwire doesn't get into Cooperstown, he at least got himself another World Series this October.)
So does all that hubris put Bonds in the lowest circle of Baseball Hell? Is he really as bad as the Black Sox, who threw the World Series? Or the racist owners who kept the game segregated until 1947? Or those uniforms the 1976 White Sox wore?the ones with the shorts? I don't think so?but he's way down there. And depending on how Roger Clemens' perjury retrial goes next April, he might have someone to throw him batting practice real soon.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2011/dec/16/barry-bonds-baseball-hell
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