In a short speech quite similar to Richard Nixon’s famous “Checkers” the dog speech, Barry Bonds told reporters in Arizona on Tuesday that they won’t have him to kick around anymore. Well, at least not until next season, anyway.
With his head pitifully placed on a crutch and his leg elevated as he sat at a picnic table, Bonds told the world he was tired and disappointed following a winter in which he was accused of steroid use, his grand jury testimony was leaked and he had two knee operations. He blamed his troubles on n you guessed it n the media.
“You wanted me to jump off a bridge, I finally did,” Bonds told a small group of media members.
“You finally brought me and my family down. So, now go pick a different person.”
Bonds had a second surgery last week on his ailing knee. The San Francisco Giants announced that he probably wouldn’t be ready on Opening Day. Bonds said that he might not be ready until Opening Day 2006, if ever again.
“My son and I are just going to enjoy our lives. You guys wanted to hurt me bad enough, you finally got me,” Bonds said. “I’m mentally drained. I’m tired of my kids crying.”
Bonds is third on the career homers list with 703, trailing Babe Ruth (714) and Hank Aaron (755).
The SportsEye would find it hard to imagine that Bonds would quit for good just 12 home runs shy of topping Ruth. But, then again, who knows what it feels like to be publicly persecuted and ridiculed and have your grand jury leaked to the press not once, but twice. Bonds admits he unknowingly used two steroid concoctions, according to leaked grand jury testimony.
This has given the media and many baseball fans the right, in their respective minds, to accuse Bonds of being on steroids since birth and to shout that he should not be allowed to visit Cooperstown, N.Y., let alone be enshrined into the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
The SportsEye has a difficult time feeling sorry for Bonds, because he brought much of this shame on himself. But fans, especially black ones, should remember that if Bonds were not as surly and not as African-American, he would have received the benefit of the doubt that Mark McGwire received until last week’s performance on Capitol Hill.
Bonds was a pitiful sight on Tuesday in Arizona, and McGwire was even more pathetic during his appearance before House of Representatives members last week.
McGwire would have been better served having alleged scam artist/attorney Charles Polk giving him legal advice. McGwire ducked, dodged and tried to evade every inquiry with the tired lines of “I’m a retired player” and “I’m not here to talk about the past.” He should have just stood on the hearing room table and shouted, “I was on steroids, now leave me alone!”
Our own Congressman William Lacy Clay’s questioning seemed to give McGwire a chance to at least put some kind of positive spin on his love for baseball and family. McGwire answered his inquiries the same as if he were asked, “Do you beat your wife, too, Mark?”
It was a sad day for Bonds on Tuesday. It was McGwire’s darkest day last Thursday. Baseball just wishes Opening Day would get here.
