Bonds + Steroids = Cheating ?

By Robert H. Kelly

Sports Illustrated reveals in excerpts from Games of Shadows, by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams that Barry Bonds has been using steroids since 1998.

You can read excerpts from the article here.

Numerous facts are presented along with documentation that Bonds not only used the steroids, but was an active participant in their administration.

Bond has steadfastly denied he ever used steroids. He made those statements to a grand jury.

Isn’t that what Martha Stewart did? She did hard time for her lies, or at least as hard as it can be in a federal prison. Bonds did receive immunity from prosecution during his testimony before a federal hearing, but not from perjury or obstruction of justice.

Bonds should be made to answer questions regarding his steroid usage. Major League Baseball should make him answer, but they won’t. It would hurt them too much.

Bonds should be banned from baseball. Pete Rose was banned and all he did was gamble on baseball. Bonds cheated.....he cheated not only the game but the fans who supported him and all those players who came before him.

His records should be tossed out and the previous performances reinstated. He can deny his usage all he wants, but does he think people are stupid?

I have an autographed photo of Bonds that I got in the late 1980s when he was playing for the Pittsburg Pirates. He was a slightly built young ball player. Look at him now. There is no way he got that big from weights. He cheated and everyone knows it.

A poll on the Sports Illustrated web site indicates 69% of the public thinks his records should be wiped out. I have checked the site three times in the past three hours and the percentage is rising every hour.

Bonds days are numbered, or should I say already expired. I would be willing to bet that he doesn’t play much this season. He will be on the roster, take batting practice, and perhaps get into a game when the outcome is already determined.

He will retire without the homerun record, and complain the rest of his life that people were out to get him. It will be a media thing, or a fan thing, or a race thing. It will be anything but the real thing.

The real thing is that he made the choice to use steroids, to cheat, and to lie about it. Whatever he gets, he deserves.

But he doesn’t need to play the victim. We are all too smart to accept that.