Bonds
posted in General |BONDS
Baseball player Barry Bonds has hit his 715th career home run, thus passing the long standing achiement of legendary Babe Ruth. No question about it, Bonds is a great power hitter. He also is a moody, surly, impolite egotist who is more interested in his own individuaal records that any other achievemnts. Bonds will never win the Mr Congenialty award. He is not highly regarded as a person — aside from baseball statistics. True, he has a cadre of hometown fans, but they have a habit of being fickle when things go bad.
Bonds wants 2 things. First, that his name will appear at the top of the list of all-time home run hitters, and second, that he be elected to the baseball Hall of Fame. Relying solely on baseball statistcs. he would appear to be a shoo-in on both ambitions. But there are storm clouds hovering about which could have an enormous effect on Mr Bonds. The one thing Bonds fears more than anything else is a small symbol called an asterisk (***) — which could be placed on his home run numbers, saying “achieved while using performance enhancing drugs”. He would be labelled forever as a druggie and cheater. What a comedown.
Also there is the Hall of Fame matter. Baseball has an iron rule about gambling, and it dates back more than 80 years. The baseball Commissioner banned gambling and also banned one of the very best players in all of baseball for gambling on the world series. Shoeless Joe Jackson was banned for LIFE.
No Hall of Fame for Joe.