DIAMONDS & HORSEHIDE: The Ballad of Barry Lamar

The 2006 season of Major League Baseball gets underway Sunday night with the glorious unfurling of the first Chicago White Sox World Championship banner since 1917. It promises to be nothing short of astonishing, and quite frankly, now that we only have the one hapless baseball team, I'm really not sure what we're going to do with ourselves.

It has been a busy pre-season, with most of the attention focused on two big stories in the game: the World Baseball Classic, which I didn't watch but am told was surprisingly entertaining, and the continuing saga of Barry Bonds, which I have watched and just makes me incredibly sad.

The latest revelations about Bonds -- which suggest that he put substances in (or on) his body which were not, strictly speaking, Wheaties -- haven't exactly come as a complete surprise. For years, people have been joking about his grotesquely swollen head, or lamenting that his gargantuan feats (73 homers in one season, over 700 home runs lifetime, dramatically increased production after the age of 34, record-setting seven MVP awards) could not possibly have come unaided. And last year came the news that Bonds had admitted to a grand jury that he used substances called "the cream" and "the clear" which may have turned out to be steroids (with really stupid names, I might add) but which he thought were "flaxseed oil". (For the record, flaxseed oil is linseed oil that hasn't had the solvent extracted. And linseed oil is used to preserve wood and leather. So, furniture polish, nutritional supplement. Gotcha.) But all along, Bonds' ongoing retort has been that he is unfairly pilloried by just about everyone on the planet Earth, and he's ever actually done anything wrong, good luck finding it. So two reporters for the San Francisco Chronicle took the challenge, and their new book claims to have found exactly the dirt that Bonds said was never there. Oops.

From the moment he moved to California, my good friend Ted Price became a self-professed Barry Bonds apologist. He wondered why fans hated him so much. He wondered why other players were considered the best in the game. Ted has long taken the position that, in Barry Bonds, we are watching the greatest player the game has ever produced. And most importantly, he's never given the steroid thing a second thought.

I mention Ted because he recently penned a defense of Barry Bonds for the Dils Musings website. (Note to self: next time I don't feel like posting a blog entry here, get Ted to write something.) It's a passionate defense, and I have to say that I agree with his points refuting some of the biggest arguments against Bonds, like his relationship with teammates, his failure to earn a World Series ring, and such. There's no question that Bonds is a polarizing figure, and Ted's right to point out that several of Barry's offenses really aren't so much worse than those of his colleagues. Has Bonds gotten a bum rap? A lot of the time, he probably has.

But let's throw all that aside. Even Ted admits that, right now, it all comes down to the issue of cheating. And in the final analysis, Ted's take is: I don't care if he cheated or not. Essentially, he's taking the same position that President Warren G. Harding adopted upon being informed that there really was no midnight ride to warn the citizens of Boston of the coming British seige: "I love Paul Revere, whether he rode or not." In other words, damn the truth, I like my story just the way it is.

Believe me, I can totally relate to Ted's position. Hey, here in Chicago, we had a great deal of fun charting the home run assault of Sammy Sosa back in 1998. (The new book suggests this home run chase spurred Bonds to get on the juice. If that's true, it's really pathetic.) Now, we weren't blind to steriods eight years ago. People noted how Sosa was a scrawny little fellow when he came up with the Texas Rangers, and reporters asked him what he was on that made his home run total suddenly skyrocket. And he reached into his locker and pulled out a bottle of Flintstones vitamins. A good laugh we had over that one. I treasure that joy of that 1998 season, and if the proof finally comes out that Sosa was bulking up illegally, I won't be pleased. But I will still cherish the memories of being at the ballpark when he launched a mammoth blast.

I'm also highly skilled at the art of denial. When I was in college, I had an internship with a radio station in Fort Worth, and that got me into Rangers games. When the job demanded it, I had the occasion to ask questions of one Rafael Palmeiro, who I came to believe was a stand-up guy and a credit to the game. So when he got dragged before a Congressional committee on steroids, I wondered what the heck he was doing there. And when he insisted, finger wagging at his inquisitors, that he had never taken a steroid in his life, I totally believed him. And then, a few months later, when he tested positive, I still thought that there had been some kind of mistake. The denial ran deep. But when he threw teammate Miguel Tejada under the wheels of an oncoming bus, claiming he must have accidentally gotten something illegal from him, then he didn't seem like such a stand-up guy anymore.

Look, I don't want Barry Bonds to be a cheater. If you give me a Hall of Fame ballot and Bonds' name is on it, I'm voting for him. I'm also voting for Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. (I'm very torn on Palmeiro.) Because in the end, they did the job. They got the hits, they won the ballgames. Like Gaylord Perry and his spitball, or the New York Giants and their telescope in the center field wall. It's cheating, and it's not right, but unless they catch you and throw you out at that moment, the win goes in the books. It's life.

My big problem with Barry Bonds is that he's been lying to us, and that it's somehow our fault that we're not buying the lie anymore. He's the cheater, but we're the jerks. I resent that.

Here's my biggest confession. I was a Pete Rose fan. A big one. It's not cool to admit that anymore, but it's true. My Little League baseball card lists him as my favorite player. And though people have conveniently forgotten this fact, he was a lot of people's favorite player. He was fierce and determined; not the most athletically gifted man, but hellbent on victory. He was a little like a white Kirby Puckett. (Kirby's another player I really liked who had a dark side. Rest in peace, Puck.) And while his quest to pass Ty Cobb as the all-time hits leader was not exactly subtle, I was definitely rooting for him.

So when the accusations came that he bet on baseball, I was aghast. How could he have broken the game's cardinal rule? He's Pete Rose. And in fact, the report accusing him was filled with circumstantial evidence, unreliable witnesses, and a dash of vendetta. So when Pete claimed that he was being unfairly accused, and that he hadn't had a chance to tell his side of the story, I rose to his defense. Let the man speak. And as the years went by, I started to wonder why he wouldn't just speak up, because the whole wronged-man defense wasn't working.

Of course, the truth was that Pete Rose did bet on baseball. And for reasons that a psychologist could probably explain, that was the cannonball that finally sunk the ship for me. Because the charges of gambling, while offensive, didn't ruin Pete Rose for me. What ruined Pete Rose for me was that he played me. He asked for my support, he assured me that he was a good guy, he traded in on years of happy memories watching him play the game of baseball. And then he admitted, "Oh yeah, I was lying when I said I was innocent all those years. But thanks for buying into it." I felt used. Not a good feeling.

Pete Rose still has his acolytes. And to be honest, I'd vote Pete into the Hall of Fame, because he got the hits, won the championships. For what he did on the field, he belongs there. But because of what he did off the field, what I'd really like is for Pete Rose to go away. I don't want to be reminded of being duped, and I don't want to be reminded that my happy memories aren't as pure as I would like them to be. I don't want him actually banished. I just want him to have the common courtesy to go away of his own volition.

The fact that Ted says he hasn't read the Sports Illustrated article and doesn't plan to tells me that he's sticking with the straight-denial route. Having been there myself, I don't totally blame him. But if he ever moves out of the denial phase, I'll just warn him now that it's going to hurt. It's going to feel cheap, having been taken in by a man who asked the world to believe in his lie. Ted's right; if you watched Bonds in a game, you were seeing something special. But I think he traded on that goodwill to further his cheating, and I can't sanction that. Like Pete Rose, I salute Barry Bonds. I respect his achievements, and honor his career. And I want Barry Bonds to go away. He's souring my game.

Maybe someday, I'll be able to forgive him. After all, forgiveness finds us all in the end.

It only took 87 years to find the White Sox.