Barry Bonds

While the indictment presents an array of unhappy alternatives for Bonds, it’s a potential disaster for the league.  read more »

The Jason Grimsley news, though upsetting to me as an Orioles fan, is a further reminded that Barry Bonds is being singled out, that perform-enhancing substances are widespread in the game of baseball. Maybe not everyone's using it, but just about everyone.

Years ago in Minnesota, the late great Zoilo Versalles , former MVP shortstop, told Tim Carlson that trainers fed baseball players "greenies"—amphetamines—so they could get up for day games after night games, overcome travel weariness, just about anything. Sometimes transformed his game from a first inning error to third inning brilliance, Versalles said. Or as he would explain to his coach, "Boss I was just concentrating..."

I hear rumors that amphetamines are still an important part of the game. HGH, steroids, greenies—what's the difference?

Everyone hates Barry Bonds. If you need me to hate him, I'll hate him too. He has supposedly disgraced baseball. Though, no, we have no idea how many guys were using steroids. Probably just about everyone, I imagine.

It seems to me there is something to be admired in the way that Bonds has conducted himself lately under all this contempt. I don't mean the sulky withdrawn angry bizarre part, but his stoicism. His unflinching response when Houston Astros' pitcher Russ Springer threw inside on him three times before hitting him, nearly beaning him, and got a standing ovation from the Astros fans for it, the jerks. Barry Bonds has managed to tune out alot of rage, not to hear it, not to let it bother him, or to try not anyway. Won't you give him that?

Like most Americans, I eat a significant amount of poultry-mostly supermarket poultry, that innocuou  read more »