I didn’t dare pass
along an NYT column to Clare on Barry Bonds; he’s not one of her favorite
people. The piece noted that Bonds seems
to have lost his steroids-bloat while still taking most of the heat—outside of
San Francisco, that is—for those excesses wrought by the Steroids Era. Bonds doesn’t come off a hero, just less of a
culprit than Bud Selig, which is just fine in my book.
Clare told me last week
that the Valpo coach wanted to show one of her players a video of Bonds waiting
nicely on a changeup, but all the girl could say was, Cheat, Cheat. So much for the hostility being a D-III
thing, although I do think non-scholarship D-III athletes are probably the least
sympathetic group when it comes to steroids.
Another possibility here is gender, that female athletes in general
don’t condone cheating. But for that to
be true, you’d have to exclude track and field.
In the end, it may be a
softball thing. Here’s a sport like
baseball played by athletes who really can’t
play baseball on any serious level. Baseball
players have it all, even at D-III, because there’s always that chance of
signing a pro contract as an undrafted free agent. And along come Barry Bonds, not satisfied
with his Hall-of-Fame career, deciding that with a little help he’ll turn
himself into the next Hank Aaron.
Come to think of it, I
can’t feel sorry for Bonds, either.
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