Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio has long been used by writers as a symbol of America at its finest. The Yankee Clipper has been sung about by Les Brown, Simon & Garfunkle, Woody Guthrie, The Stranglers, John Fogerty, Jennifer Lopez, Madonna, Tori Amos and Billy Joel, to name a few. The author of baseball’s longest hitting streak has been a feature on screen from Everybody Loves Raymond and South Pacific to The Simpsons and Seinfeld to Looney Toons and Angels in the Outfield and even Star Trek. He’s even been a key figure in great novels ranging from Farewell, My Lovely to The Old Man and the Sea. DiMaggio is, perhaps, the most glorified athlete in American history, as well as a personal favorite, and so it was that I turned my lonely eyes to him when Barry Bonds tied Hank Aaron’s homerun record today, August fourth, 2007, right before my eyes.
For years, I’ve thought that Barry Bonds was representative of everything that’s wrong with American society and human thought as a whole, and I’ve wondered why nobody has turned Bonds into the media opposite of Joe DiMaggio. Consider: Bonds is, unequivocally, a cheater: some argue that truth to be acceptable or even understandable because he was but one of many steroid users of the modern day, but that argument doesn’t have enough depth to live as the bulk of his work and the size of his body tell the observant world that he went above and beyond the typical Juicer in the 1990s.
Consider: Bonds is an abusive man: abusive to fans, from those grown men and women who boo him to children seeking autographs; Bonds is abusive to his teammates (see: Jeff Kent) and managers (see: Dusty Baker) and he’s self-centered, as well, having turned the San Francisco Giants clubhouse into The House That Bonds Built in recent years; and, since baseball is a Three Strike game, it should be mentioned that Bonds is foul to those who he claims to love and who love him, as evidenced by his relationship with Kimberly Bell.
Consider: he is openly contemptuous of baseball’s history, skewing Babe Ruth with disrespect on several occasions (before the 2003 All-Star Game and before he passed Babe Ruth) and he’s even taken shots at contemporary greats, like when he said “Hell no [Is Alex Rodriguez better than you?]”.
Consider: Bonds’ reputation as a racist, derived from the contempt he shows Ruth but not Aaron or Mays, by his 1998 resentment of Mark McGwire but not Sammy Sosa and the bitter feelings he has toward white people, which he has shown while claiming that baseball doesn’t “build stuff” for black athletes (his Godfather, Willie Mays, would disagree, I’m sure) and by 1983 Rookie of the Year Ron Kittle’s recollection of an incident in which he asked Bonds for autographs and Bonds said, “I don’t sign for white people.”
The authors of the Bonds-exposing book Game of Shadows contend that Barry Bonds began taking steroids after the 1998 Homerun Chase between Sammy Sosa of the Chicago Cubs and Mark McGwire of the St. Louis Cardinals (even as a child, I wasn’t a fan of either of them) because he was jealous of the attention given McGwire, who was just a one-dimensional white man (which he was, in all fairness: he only hit homeruns, and he was Caucasian). Even his climb into the dark side is worthy of scorn: “Pity me, the press gave attention to two obvious steroid users, and I want it, so I’ll inject myself with every steroid I can get my hands on.”
Further to consider: his relationship with Ken Griffey Jr., the other All-Time Great outfielder of the 1990s — here:
In the winter following the 1998 season, Bonds brought his family on vacation to Orlando, where he could also visit his longtime buddy. After spending a day toting his two kids around Disney World, he headed to Griffey’s house for dinner. On an otherwise ordinary night, over an otherwise ordinary meal, Griffey, Bonds, a rep from an athletic apparel company and two other associates chatted informally about the upcoming season. With Griffey’s framed memorabilia as a backdrop, and Mark McGwire’s obliteration of the single-season home run record a fresh memory, Bonds spoke up as he never had before. He sounded neither angry nor agitated, simply frustrated. “You know what,” he said. “I had a helluva season last year, and nobody gave a crap. Nobody. As much as I’ve complained about McGwire and Canseco and all of the bull with steroids, I’m tired of fighting it. I turn 35 this year. I’ve got three or four good seasons left, and I wanna get paid. I’m just gonna start using some hard-core stuff, and hopefully it won’t hurt my body. Then I’ll get out of the game and be done with it.”
Silence.
According to others in the room, Griffey was uncertain how to react. At age 29, he was at the top of his game, fresh off a season in which he compiled 56 home runs and 146 RBIs. As the pressure to indulge in performance-enhancing drugs mounted, the man known as ‘The Kid’ stayed clean. Sure, he, too, could see the physical differences in many players, including some on his own team. But to him, baseball wasn’t important enough to risk his health and reputation. “If I can’t do it myself, then I’m not going to do it,” Griffey says. “When I’m retired, I want them to at least be able to say, ‘There’s no question in our minds that he did it the right way.’ I have kids. I don’t want them to think their dad’s a cheater.”
Griffey is, now, a shell of his former self, but he has “done it” the right way while Bonds is about to break the record the wrong way. Pearlman goes on to assert that Bonds truly cared for the integrity of the game at one point but couldn’t help himself, couldn’t bear not having the attention and couldn’t resist the temptation to hit a ton of homeruns, make a lot of money and “get out,” which is, ironically, exactly what the hated Mark McGwire did. But worse than everything in this whole affair is that Hank Aaron will no longer be baseball’s homerun king. That was inevitable because nobody can be The Man forever (although some glorify Joe DiMaggio for his hit streak, because most believe that it’s a record that’ll never be duplicated), but that Barry Bonds — racist, mean-spirited, cheating and selfish Barry Bonds — had to break it is a tragedy.
Hank Aaron faced racists of a harsher era and the adversity thrown his way is greater than anything Barry Bonds has faced. You can’t even call Bonds a cheater or a juicer without having someone huffily ask for proof or say, “So?” Hank Aaron? People were shouting him down as a “nigger” and threatening to end his life all day every day at the ballpark and outside because uttering such a word at one of baseball’s stadiums would get you arrested, while saying it in Aaron’s time might very well have gotten you cheered. Security is on Barry Bonds’ side while Aaron didn’t have as many guards nor could he fully trust him, considering the time, but the point is that Aaron had truer reasons to be bitter and angry, but he let it go and was perfect class throughout his career. Aaron faced true evil, while Bonds himself has become a form of it: greedy, to the extreme and envious, both of which are deadly sins and they have killed his legacy here at the Office. He has raised my esteem and awareness of Hammering Hank Aaron, but he has tarnished baseball’s image around the world. He has cast a shadow over baseball that won’t lift until Human Growth Hormone is tested for in baseball and the game’s consequences become stricter. He was a great player who can’t be called great anymore — maybe his numbers are great, but he forfeits all accolades with his needle, and he should be known as the lesser of those he has passed, as well as the opposite of Joe DiMaggio, whose time I turn my sad, lonely eyes to rather than focus on the villainy that has occurred before me between the lines in my lifetime.
I can not condone the man as man nor as an athlete and definitely not as a role model. I can not recognize his achievements on the field. I will not be like those fans who applaud him at the plate after they boo him but not before they boo and applaud him. I am unequivocal, and if I caught his homerun ball I’d write “STEROIDS!” on it and then sell it to anyone who may still want it, just so its legacy will be cemented, as his should be.