Barry Bonds: A victim or a cheat?
Experts unpack America’s latest morality play
By Alexander Eule
May 10, 2006

As Barry Bonds launched a deep fly ball into center field last night, San Francisco fans jumped up in their seats, expecting to be a part of history. Bonds, sitting on home run number 713, appeared to have finally hit the shot that would tie him with Babe Ruth for second on the all-time home run list. Racing the ball to the fence, Cubs outfielder Juan Pierre leaped up – as if on assignment from the Babe himself -- and made the catch just over the top of the wall.  

Five years after smashing the single-season home run record, not much comes easy for Bonds these days. While the Giants slugger and a stadium worth of hometown fans sighed at their bad luck last night, much of America exhaled with relief, pleased that two men still stood between Bonds and sports’ most hallowed record.   

It’s been a slow crawl to infamy for Barry Bonds. As the aging outfielder hits fewer home runs and struggles with injuries, headlines about heroic feats have been replaced by questions of steroids abuse, marital infidelity, alleged perjury, possible tax evasion and general personality problems. In the wake of a book detailing Bonds’ steroid use, baseball commissioner Bud Selig appointed a commission to study steroids in the game. Most commentators felt it was a targeted campaign against Bonds. Selig’s recent announcement that Major League Baseball would do nothing to commemorate Bonds passing of Babe Ruth only strengthened the view that Bonds has become persona non grata at MLB headquarters.

Bonds’ teammates have also complained of unfair treatment for the star. Giants outfielder Moises Alou recently suggested that opposing teams have been walking Bonds this season specifically to keep him from passing Ruth and Henry Aaron. "They're giving me that impression, the way they've been treating him,” Alou told the San Francisco Chronicle 10 days ago, largely in reference to an intentional walk Bonds received in the eight inning of a game against the Arizona Diamondbacks.  The Giants were winning 7-2 at the time.

Bonds himself has often bemoaned his treatment by baseball and the media. Quite notably, he has suggested that his race is a major factor in the treatment he has received from Major League Baseball, fans and the media. In a racially-sensitized world, it’s a significant claim and one that deserves serious exploration.  While noted sociology, history, and African American studies experts all say race is a complicating factor in any discussion about Bonds, its degree of importance is much less clear.

“The fact is he’s an African American athlete on the verge of passing the most iconic white athlete of the 20th Century,” says Daniel Nathan, an American Studies professor at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. “That’s going to wrangle some people.”

Jules Tygiel, a historian at San Francisco State University and the author of numerous baseball books, including Baseball's Great Experiment: Jackie Robinson and His Legacy, says: “Race is always a factor when you’re dealing with African American players.”

Tygiel adds, however, “Bonds has to stand on his own record. One of the things is he’s African American. But he also has a particular personality and history.”

These personal factors, experts say, account for a great deal of the scorn Bonds has endured. “Americans don’t like liars and cheaters, and that’s what this looks like,” Nathan says, in reference to steroids and the pending investigation into whether Bonds perjured himself before a federal grand jury. 

Beyond his legal troubles, Bonds’ on-the-field actions have even been called into question by local government. Last year, the North Dakota Legislative Assembly passed a resolution calling on Major League Baseball to strip Bonds of his single-season home run record of 73. North Dakota, of course, was the birthplace of Roger Maris, the New York Yankees outfielder who held the home run record for 37 years before the alleged steroid-induced home run explosion led by Mark McGwire in 1998. 

North Dakota State Senator Joel Heitkamp, the sponsor of the resolution, says the motivation behind the bill was simply that North Dakotans felt Maris’ hard work was being erased by players with an unfair advantage. “He kind of went through hell doing what he had to do to pull this off,” Heitkamp says, referring to Maris’ unpopular record pursuit in 1961. “The resolution was intended to just send a message to the Maris family and people in North Dakota that we’re going to stand up for Roger.”

Heitkamp, who also hosts a Clear Channel radio show in North Dakota called “News and Views,” dismisses any suggestion that race played a role in his resolution or the overall dislike of Bonds. “Where I come from, more people were cheering for Sosa than McGwire,” he says of the 1998 home run race. “And you wouldn’t exactly call the upper Midwest racially integrated.”

Later in the telephone conversation, Heitkamp asked incredulously, “Are people like myself racists for not wanting [Bonds] to beat Hank Aaron?”

Those who have followed Bonds over the years say the outfielder has earned his reputation on his own accord. “I think Bonds himself has set the stage for all of this – being overall a not very likeable player,” Tygiel says. “There’s no real reservoir of good will he brings to the table.”

Public relations, in fact, has become a major problem for Bonds. Observers say poor image management helps to explain the especially negative reception Bonds has faced, compared to someone like New York Yankee first baseman Jason Giambi, who has also been implicated in the growing steroids scandal. “[Giambi] had tickets he could cash in when he got in touble,” says Gerald Early, a professor of African American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis. “He had always been a good guy with the press.” 
 
Additionally, Early cites Bonds’ steroid abuse as particularly troubling to most Americans. “There’s something about it that’s different than Gaylord Perry loading up spitballs,” Early says. “There are different kinds of cheating. A person who cheats on his spouse is a little different than a person who cheats on a driving test.”

Nevertheless, Early, who writes extensively on jazz and baseball, says Bonds is most likely speaking from the heart when he complains of racial bias. “I think there is a tendency for a prominent African American, if that person gets in trouble, to say this is happening to me because of my race.”

Early says Michael Jackson, for instance, “seemed to be trying to erase his race” for years and only made an issue of his background after being charged with child molestation in 2003. “If you come from a group with a history of persecution, you’re going to be a little paranoid,” Early says. “It comes with the cultural equipment.”

In reality, though, Early believes race might be misunderstood in this instance. “Baseball has a diminishing black audience,” Early says. “The last thing [Major League Baseball and the press] would want to do is persecute the star black person in the game.”

“I think in many ways, if [Bonds] had a better relationship with the press, his race would have helped him more,” Early adds. “They would have gone out of their way to cut him some slack.”

Early says baseball has made some progress on the racial front over the years. “Look at John Rocker,” he says, referring to the former reliever for the Atlanta Braves. “Rocker made a whole bunch of intolerant remarks. Baseball fans – most of whom are white – booted him out of the business. That says something.”

Early still doesn’t dismiss the racial component of Bonds’ public image, but says it’s difficult to measure the effect of race. 

Mary McDonald, a professor of physical education, health and sport studies at the Miami University of Ohio, says, however, that Bonds has been a victim of the race stereotypes that still exist in America.

Bonds, she says, gets connected to enduring “stereotypes and myths that are already in our culture – that whites are more dedicated and more humble.” It is through such a filter, McDonald believes, that Bonds’ alleged steroid use gets increased attention.

“I don’t think race is the only thing going on,” says McDonald, who is the past president of North American Society for the Sociology of Sport. “But it’s definitely really preeminent.” 

Bonds is not the first baseball player to be hounded by negative attention in the middle of a record pursuit. Both black and white athletes have been the target of abuse. Maris is as famous for the hair he lost chasing Ruth’s single season home run record as he is for the 61 home runs he ultimately hit. And Henry Aaron had to endure racist hate mail as he passed Ruth’s all-time home run record in 1974.  

“Not everyone wants these records broken,” Tygiel says, suggesting that fans and reporters have used various tactics, however heinous, to pressure record seekers in the past. Maris “was viewed as an unworthy interloper. Maris somehow didn’t have the credentials,” Tygiel says, compared to Mickey Mantle who was the more popular choice to break the record in 1961 before he fell ill at the end of the season.

“The Maris quest to break the record is something of an apt comparison here,” Tygiel says of Bonds’ own pursuit. “There’s always a question of worthiness. Bonds is a great player…The issue becomes one of not finding him worthy for other reasons.”

Nathan says the combination of multiple factors, then, are at the root of the current hostility toward Bonds: “You put in this combination of a surly, although intelligent and articulate guy, who almost naturally seems to engender animosity and then you add to that mix the idea that he’s lying and cheating and on the verge of breaking some really hallowed records. Well, you do the calculus.”

Heitkamp, the North Dakota state senator and radio show host, seems to represent the casual baseball fan. He blames Major League Baseball for the current steroid scandal more than he does any individual player. “Major League Baseball turned a blind eye,” he says. “Nobody took a look at the baseball cards from 10 years earlier to realize that these guys were starting to look like a float in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.”

Seeking to emphasize his sense of racial equality, Heitkamp says his constituents’ dislike of Bonds has nothing to do with race. He glowingly recalled the recently deceased Minnesota Twins outfielder Kirby Puckett, an African American player who had off-the-field problems of his own but was always considered a good teammate and community leader.

“Kirby Puckett, if he walked into any pub in the upper Midwest, wouldn’t have to buy a beer,” Heitkamp says. “Barry Bonds, first of all, wouldn’t even want to be in that pub. Second off, he’d have to buy.”

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