Originally posted on Projo.com
Happiness is a 3-game series at Shea Stadium where even Rey Ordonez gets a game-winning hit and Barry Bonds doesn’t homer. But then Bonds has to go and spoil it in the fourth game . . .
Sports is entertainment, and entertainment needs good guys, heroes. But it also helps to have villains. And Barry Bonds, like John Rocker, hasn’t just blundered into the villain role; he’s embraced it so thoroughly it might as well have been scripted for him by the WWF.
Bonds’ improbable late-career assault on the home run record — a record he never challenged until Mark McGwire raised the bar — has provoked a new round of that all-American sport, Barry Bonds hating. Rick Reilly of SI, who never met a moral high horse he didn’t mount, led the way with a series of Jeff Kent quotes slamming Bonds as a selfish, me-first guy who surrounds himself with a staff of acolytes and won’t give his teammates the time of day, let alone a seat in his comfy chair and a gander at his big screen TV. (Never mind that Kent has never been well-liked anywhere he’s played, and that none of his teammates is exactly hard up for cash to buy a recliner and a TV at home). Bob Klapisch piled on with innuendo that Bonds uses steroids and/or corks his bat — fair enough charges if Klapisch has a good faith basis for levelling them, but he wouldn’t phrase them the way he does if he did. Klapisch should think back to when Bobby Bonilla called him names one time, and remember that this is not always a great strategy. As much fun as we have maligning Bonds, a little fairness and objectivity wouldn’t be a bad thing, for the sake of the readers, if not the man himself.
Continue reading Hating Barry Bonds, Scoring Rey Ordonez and the 1962 MVP Race