Dear Mr. McGowan:
The all-time home run king, Barry Bonds, is sitting at home, unemployed. Today, he offered to play for any team who will hire him, at the minimum MLB wage, and also to donate that salary to charity.
How sad is that?
As longtime readers of this blog know, I've been both a big Barry Bonds supporter as well as a vocal critic. It's obvious that he did use steroids, but it is also obvious that anyone else of note in recent baseball history also did so.
Probably, this entire era will end up clouded in the eyes of historians who try to compare the accomplishments of, say, Babe Ruth, with those of a Barry Bonds. But nobody will ever be able to untangle the variables enough to make an apples-to-apples comparison.
So, ultimately, the history of America's pastime will have to be written as a series of separate eras. When that occurs, historians will have to come to grips with the numbers generated during the 1990s and early 2000s; and when they do so, Barry Bonds will be at the top of the list.
In other words, what I am suggesting is that whatever damage the steroid claims have done is a temporary phenomenon. As the controversy cools (as all controversies do), people will still stand back in awe of what Bonds accomplished, whether juiced or not.
It is time to give him the chance to redeem his place in history. He says he is ready to play, and money certainly is not his motivation.
You, meanwhile, are retiring. But you still hold the power to do one last thing that might salvage your reputation, not to mention his.
Sign Barry, Peter. You'll never regret it.
-30-
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