Singing Loudly

Barry Bonds has the home run record and I couldn't be happier. He is the best offensive baseball player in the history of baseball. He has been able to accomplish this during a time in baseball where public scrutiny, media attention, and the 24 hour a day cameras in your face culture has persisted. Throughout it all he has been a solid baseball player, a solid family man, and uninterested in selling himself to the media to make more money. He is a baseball player.

He'll be unfairly clouded by the steroids issue in ways that Mark McGuire, Roger Clemens, and Jason Giambi never will. Is it because he is black? One could make that assumption with a stronger basis than assuming Bond's used steroids. Bonds set this record without ever once testing positive for steroids use. Not once.

The baseball commissioner, Bud Selig, will forever be remembered as a bitter old man who did everything he could to encourage steroids use in baseball while it was filling his bank account. He will be remembered as a terrible baseball commissioner who caused the near collapse of an American past time.

Unlike Bud Selig, it's nice to see a player who cares about the game make such a remarkable achievement.

Labels: sports