Chapter 43.4: Your Cheating Heart

I don’t think any true baseball fan is surprised at the accusations in Sports Illustrated about Barry Bonds’ steroid use. Anyone who has watched him play since his days with the Pirates, when he was a thin whip of a batter with a fantastically quick bat. By the time 1998 came around and Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa passed Babe Ruth and then Roger Maris’s single-season home run totals, Bonds was already a sure-fire Hall of Famer. No one else who’d won as many Most Valuable Player awards as he had at that point had not been elected to induction in Cooperstown.

I liked this column in the San Jose Mercury News, which amusingly describes another incident that’s been in the press recently: a conversation that reportedly occurred between Barry Bonds and Ken Griffey Jr. Basically, the tale goes, Bonds said he told Griffey he keeps having great years but no one respected what he’d accomplished, but the fans and media loved people like McGwire and Sosa, so Bonds decided if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em. Griffey said he has no recollection about the conversation. As the sons of well regarded ball players, they’ve been around the game all their lives. They know there are some things that aren’t supposed to be said to people outside the game, and that includes reporters.

It seems to me that someone’s trying to besmirch Griffey: guilt by association with Bonds. That’s just wrong. This is a man who’s kept consistent throughout his career, who’s won an MVP, who’s hit more than 500 home runs, and was once regarded as the best player in the game. Not only will he be inducted into the Hall of Fame five years after he eventually retires, but he’s already been named as one of the All-Century team. And as he’s gotten older, his body has deteriorated like it’s supposed to. He doesn’t hit 45-50 homers like he did during his prime. He never got pudgy. I would be amazed if he were a steroid user.

I think Griffey’s accomplishments will eventually be considered among the most impressive of this current era. While other players like Bonds, Sosa, McGwire, Canseco, Rafael Palmeiro have all either been accused of using steroids or have admitted to it, Griffey has passed through without such accusations. Some fans may not like his sometimes aloof demeanor, but no true baseball fan can deny that Ken Griffey Jr. is a great baseball player. We need to get this season started so Griffey can get back to doing what he’s always done and these spurious, stories can fall by the wayside. Go ahead and investigate Bonds, whose surly attitude and jealousy may have finally caught up with him. He has ruined his own reputation. He’ll likely pass Babe Ruth’s career home run total by May, but who will really believe that he deserves to be considered like Ruth or Hank Aaron? It’s his own damn fault.