On Monday morning, a visibly slimmer and smiling Barry Bonds walked out of a dugout and onto a baseball field for the first time in seven years.
The man branded as the face of Major League Baseball’s steroid era shook hands, signed autographs, imparted hitting tips to several San Francisco Giants players and even answered some questions from the media. All in all, baseball’s largest asterisk, hired as the Giants’ guest hitting instructor, had what seemed like a really good day.
As Giants manager Bruce Bochy told reporters, “We would always have a welcome mat out there for him.”
But a welcome mat is the last thing that needs to be rolled out for baseball’s all-time home runs leader, who still vehemently denies any use of performance enhancing drugs during his career. Allowing Bonds to parade around spring training being praised by managers and players is yet another sign of weakness and hypocrisy from MLB.
MLB just finished its battle to suspend another high-profile steroid user, Alex Rodriguez, for a season, and yet it sits idly by as the man who tainted baseball’s most prestigious record waltzes back into the game to open arms and autographs.
There’s nothing wrong with Bonds getting a second chance. Perhaps he’s changed in the last seven years. He definitely seemed happier this week than any time during the last few years of his career.
But MLB needs a consistent standard to judge players by. The league can’t vilify active players using steroids with one hand and with the other, stand by as former steroid users re-enter the league.
August will mark the 25th anniversary of MLB banning Pete Rose, the all-time hits leader, from baseball for gambling on games while he was a player and a coach for the Cincinnati
Reds.
Rose admitted to betting on baseball while playing and coaching, but he denies the more egregious crime of betting against his own teams or throwing games to win bets. Similarly, Bonds has never technically been proven guilty of using steroids because he’s never failed a drug
test.
MLB will never admit it, but the reason it continues to scapegoat Rose while turning a blind eye to former steroid users is because it knows steroids made baseball more popular, which made the league a hell of a lot of money. Rose never made the league the kind of money names like Bonds, Sosa and McGwire did.
Instead of welcoming Bonds in and walking the party line, just once I’d like to see a Giants player stand up and refuse to take advice from the face of tainted baseball.
That player would have a welcome mat at my house.
Spencer Hutchinson is a
21-year-old mass communication senior from West Monroe.