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Barry Bonds Solidifying Himself as Baseball’s Biggest Villain with Collusion Case

By Josh Sippie

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There are few who have done more damage to the overall integrity of a sport than Barry Bonds has done (and is continuing to do) to baseball. Even after his retirement at 42 years of age, he’s still finding ways to negatively impact America’s past time. He was already the commander-in-chief that ruined an entire era of baseball, an era forever remembered as the ‘steroid era.’ And now he wants more.

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Let’s talk about the case first off. In 2007, Barry Bonds received no offers from any teams to play. He was 42 and fresh off his improbable and should-have-been impossible record-shattering season. His stats obviously should have been coveted by every team in existence, but his attitude, suspicion of cheating and advanced age could have conceivably driven people away.

But did Major League owners collude to keep Bonds out of baseball? Probably, yes. And if they did, they deserve massive credit. He was an absolute blight on the game and if the bigwigs in the game banded together in an attempt to stop the bleeding, then good for them. It may have been illegal, but good for them.

Barry Bonds is only now bringing this to light because he wanted to wait until his BALCO legal issues were out of the way. That in and of itself is pretty ironic. The legal troubles are essentially over with his obstruction of justice charge being overturned.

Barry Bonds will probably win the case and further inflict his sickening blight on the beautiful game of baseball, but one thing he can’t do, although he’ll probably try, is sue his way into the esteemed Hall of Fame. Bonds received less than 37% of the vote and even given how long he still has on the ballot, the odds of the King of the Home Run (that hurts to say) getting into the hall is slim to none. It’s baseball’s final way of telling Bonds that he has no power over this great sport and in the end, he will lose.

Baseball has had villains pass through its door. Alex Rodriguez is a villain. His own manager Joe Girardi can’t stand him. The Yankees don’t want to pay him. Every time he steps up to the plate, it’s one step closer to him being gone from baseball forever.

Pete Rose may be considered a villain, but he never cheated on the game. He was one of the (if not the) greatest hitters the game has ever seen but he broke the biggest rule and is now paying the consequences. Barry Bonds should be blacklisted from the game for all the harm he’s done to it, but apparently that’s illegal. What a silly world we live in.

Most villains retire and go away. Where are Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Roger Clemens and that crew now? They disappeared and accepted their punishment. But Barry Bonds? He’s still lurking in the shadows of Major League baseball, trying to inflict as much damage as he can.

The legal issues with BALCO were an atrocity, but now he wants to make it even worse by suing Major League baseball for collusion. I don’t know if the fact that he’ll probably win or the fact that he’s actually doing this makes me more sick. At what point will Barry Bonds be satisfied with the damage he’s done? Does he truly think he’s repairing his image by pulling on the legal strings of Major League Baseball or is he doing this to fulfill his own twisted ego?

The answer is the latter. Bonds has nothing left to gain. His reputation is so tarnished it’s not even funny, so the only reason he’s still lurking is for money or for spite. Given his history and his personality, it’d say it’s a combination of both.

What makes Bonds whole steroid-fiasco even worse is just how good he was before he became a cheater. When Barry Bonds was suiting up for the Pittsburgh Pirates, he was destined for greatness and (ironically) for the hall of fame. He won two MVPs, had power, speed, average and everything that a player could ask for.

But it wasn’t enough. Barry Bonds was a latecomer to the steroid era, but he did it grander than anyone else. You know what they say, ” go big or go home.” Well, Bonds went big, really big, as he inflated in the off-season when he was traded to the San Francisco Giants.

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With eyes on the most respected record in baseball and some of the best players to ever grace the diamond – Hank Aaron, Willie Mays, Babe Ruth – Barry Bonds set about destroying what those greats built and ripped it asunder with his PED-oozing hands.

The fact that he was already such a talented players makes this whole ordeal even worse. The same is true of Alex Rodriguez. These guys had such talent and ability that they could have been superstars based on their own skill levels. Maybe you could blame the circumstances and having to keep up with the competition, but in the end you’re responsible for your own decisions and Bonds made one of the worst.

As if it wasn’t enough to ruin their own career, Barry Bonds and the steroid crew ruined an entire era of baseball along with them. The ‘steroid era’ will go down as one of the darkest times in baseball history. Any player who played during the era is forever under scrutiny and the old adage ‘innocent until proven guilty’ has henceforth been overturned to ‘guilty until proven innocent.’

Take Jeff Bagwell for instance. Jeff Bagwell, who was never proven guilty of steroids, is being kept out of the hall of fame because of the suspicion of steroids. Guys like McGwire, Sosa and most of all Barry Bonds have marred innocent players who never cheated. The only fault Bagwell ever had was playing in an era of cheaters and scoundrels. I even heard some baseball writers say they won’t vote for a single player who played during the steroid era. Now while I think that’s incredibly daft and short-sighted, it’s more proof of what these cheaters did to the game.

Bagwell is one of the best first basemen to pass through the game. If you look at his baseball reference page, one of Bagwell’s highest similarity scores is Frank Thomas, who’s in the hall of fame. So why isn’t Bagwell? Because of the era.

And now, in spite of all he’s done, Barry Bonds wants money and he wants an apology (or something like that). When will it end?

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