barry bonds

Okay, you fucking sanctimonious shithead airbag idiots. I've had enough of your slamming Barry Bonds. The last straw, and the one that pushed me into shouting, raving mad territory, is today's piece on ESPN.com by Eric Neel comparing Bonds to Mickey Mantle. His basic question is who disappoints us more, Mickey Mantle by being an alcoholic and basically throwing away his 30s in favor of booze, or Barry Bonds, who almost undoubtedly took some form of performance-enhancing drugs starting in 2000 and giving us some of the greatest offensive years in baseball history? Neel says,

"Steroids are creepy, alien, illicit doorways to a frightening cyborg future. We want no part of them. They make us long for purity and certainty. They're a threat not only to baseball records we cherish but to our very sense of self, to our most basic understanding of what we mean by 'human being' and what we understand to be the limits of human accomplishment."

This is asinine. Performance-enhancing drugs may be illicit, but they're hardly "alien." Barry Bonds has been taught since he was very young that all the matters is to be the best he can be at the sport he plays. It became evident to him around 2000 that a good way to do that was to take performance enhancers. They worked. He was already a mortal lock for the Hall of Fame and now he's a mortal lock for any discussion about the GOAT. "Frightening cyborg future"?!?!? What planet is this guy living on? Athletes have taken performance enhancers since ancient Greece (that always seems uncomfortable to me as a starting point because it's so Euro-centric, but that's another story). They often didn't work, and the only reasons steroids and HGH have become so controversial is because their effects are clear and dramatic. But why should drugs be the only form of body-enhancement that's considered cheating? What about the sharkskin bathing suits that Olympic swimmers now wear? What about Tiger Woods' laser eye surgery that allows him to see WAY better than 20/20? Or Mark McGwire's custom-made contacts that had the same effect? Or the fact that cyclists in the Tour de France not only have oxygen-pumping drugs but also superfast custom-tailored bikes and helmets of which cyclists of yore couldn't have dreamed. The way sports are played changes all the time, the ceiling to which they can be practiced raises ever-higher as technology improves. Performance-enhancing drugs are just a technology. Of course Barry Bonds (and Rafael Palmerio, and Sammy Sosa, and Mark McGwire, and Roger Clemens, and Jason Giambi, and who knows how many others) were going to use them. The drugs made them better. Just like not playing against people of color made Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb better.

The only argument I can see against steroids is that they are unsafe, which they seemingly are, but we are moving closer and closer to a time when that is no longer an issue. When the health risk from taking them is gone, they should be legalized and permitted in professional sports. Period. I don't give a shit if Barry Bonds stuck some chemicals in his ass, I only care that the other night, sitting alone in my living room, I was overcome by happiness and wonder at the sight of Bonds, raising his fists, impassive as the ball went out to the right-center bleachers and then finally cracking a smile as he rounded the bases to thunderous adulation in San Francisco. I had goosebumps from my scalp to the soles of my feet when he broke down thanking the sky in place of his father. It wasn't quite 2131 for me, but it was pretty amazing. Sportswriters like Eric Neel need to shut the fuck up and sit down. Let awesome be awesome. Rock on, Barry Bonds.