Barry, What Will We Do When You Are Gone?

So, since I don't like to mention death and anyone who's obviously alive in the same breath, I had a difficult time thinking about this one. Not really, but that's the world I live in. That's the way I feel like I am supposed to think. But philosophy aside, I was walking through my office the other day and tripped into a conversation. I rarely walk through the sales portion of my office. They don't need me, and they can't really chat, as they are on the phone, seemingly all on the phone.

But it was a Friday afternoon, they were about to have a meeting and they were not on the phones. And I stumbled, tripped and nearly fell forward into a conversation. Barry Bonds. "Barry Bonds needs to have his arm broken...." interrupted with, "Almost no one would miss him if he died next week." And the person sitting in the cubicle next to him said, "Almost? Don't you mean no one?"

And I didn't say anything because I had a task list a mile and a half long and I was only a quarter mile into the thing. As I was working on a nearby computer, I listened to the conversation. After the heightened hyperbole of the wish for Barry's death, the conversation turned to the relatively reasonable conversation. The woman who wanted Bonds' arm broken didn't step away from her wish. But the conversation about his death went to the side.

What is it about this man that makes us so convinced that he's guilty of something? Game of Shadows? Or is it that you helped him shoot himself full of steroids? I'm not professing Barry Bonds' innocence, by any stretch of the imagination, because I don't know he didn't do steroids or any other performance enhancing drugs. Simply put, baseball is full of cheaters. We don't know why they cheat, but if you have watched baseball, then you know that cheating is a part of the game (Black Sox and Spit Balls anyone?)

I've read tons of commentary about the idea of cheating in baseball (just put Black, Sox, Spit and Balls into your search engine and you'll find some of it) and at the worst, we seriously think that Barry Bonds cheated. He's smaller now, and he's still hitting home runs. But the average sports fan doesn't take that into account.

Do I want Barry Bonds to hit 756? Not really. Do I want him to bypass the man who's character helped him hit his baseballs when no one else would support him? No, not really.

Do I want Alex Rodriguez or Albert Pujols or any other guy to more quickly pass by whatever number Barry puts up? Sure. But that's mainly my dislike for the person. Do I wish him ill? No. I dislike the person that Barry puts forward in the media.

Through it all, many people still seem to like the guy. Okay, a few people, most of them living in the Bay Area, but still people seem to like the guy.

I personally think, no matter how many people like or dislike the man, it's a weird world that we live in, where we put people like the Babe on a pedestal, but Barry, we want him in the sewer.

A very strange world. Now, I step off my soapbox of moral relativism.