My Own 'Roid Rage

I just have to imagine that Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig begins and ends every day with a prayer that whichever deity to which he prays somehow intervenes in Barry Bonds's path to breaking Hank Aaron's career home run record. Baseball has always prided itself as the game of tradition and fundamentals and hard work and everything that makes this country great. Bonds is not the man to hold one of the sport's most sacred records.

From a PR perspective, there couldn't be anyone worse than Bonds to break this record. Hank Aaron earned the record with dignity in the face of violent and hateful racism. He has since maintained his stature as one of the game's elder statesmen. The best that you can say about Bonds is that he is a selfish jerk.

If the recently released book "Game of Shadows" (an excerpt of which appeared in a recent Sports Illustrated and which has been further discussed and dissected publicly) is to be believed (it seems to be pretty well sourced by its authors, respected journalists), Bonds has cheated his way from being a good player to a dominant one. Some might argue that baseball had no rules in place against steroids use, so who Bonds is not at fault for exploiting the situation. That's nonsense. While MLB may not have banned the steroids that Bonds allegedly used, the law has. If the steroids were illegal to knowingly use, which they were, then they should not be the vehicle by which Bonds puts his name in the record books.