In an ESPN website column, Pulitzer Prize-winning author David Halberstam, usually a keen chronicler of contemporary events, asks in a mid-July column, "Will he do it [break Mark McGwire's homerun record]? And, equally important, will we care that much if he does? Can we, with the help of today's highly paid spin doctors, learn to love Barry Bonds? Can he learn to love us?" Halberstam, like much of the massed media, doesn't like Barry Bonds.[**]

Aloof, combative, elitist, defiant, selfish...these are some of the characteristics associated with baseball player Barry Bonds. Notice, of course, is always taken that he is perhaps the best all-around baseball player of his generation. Three NL Most Valuable Player Awards, nine All-Star Games, eight Gold Glove Awards...Bonds is a supremely talented baseball player. Baseball talent is in his blood. His father, Bobby Bonds was a well-respected major leaguer who holds the National League record for most homeruns in a season as a team's leadoff batter (11, for San Francisco in 1973). His cousin, on his mother Pat's side is Reggie Jackson, an October home run hitter of remarkable caliber. Bonds' godfather is the famed baseball great Willie Mays. He is part of what is sometimes referred to as baseball royalty. But people don't seem to like him.

Bonds' reputation for being a creep was in part sculpted off the playing field during a six year divorce battle. In a case that made it to the California Supreme Court, Bonds was seen as a rich man taking advantage of a poor lovesick woman. He wasn't much liked by his teammates in Pittsburgh where he came up as a rookie in 1986. That season he led all first year players in homeruns, runs batted in, stolen bases and walks.

So it is a question of incredible talent buttressed by a problematic personality. The massed media paints a picture of an individual more concerned with himself than with the team and by metaphorical extension Bonds has become an anti-social anti-hero. Someone wrote that Bonds' is our generation's Ty Cobb. Our heroes, the great legends and epics proclaim, cannot be anti-social. And given the current crisis of terrorism, anti-social anti-heroes aren't desirable, in baseball or anywhere else.

Bonds' problems with his public image remind us of Roger Maris' difficulties as he pursued the home run record in 1961. We know from Maris' ordeal that there is a distinction to be made between image and reality. We also know that the need to know is often stronger than the need for crystal clear accuracy. Like winning at all cost, knowing at all cost can lead to dishonesty. Still, we like our mythology.

Like Odysseus, that "flower of the Achaean chivalry," Barry Bonds will not be tempted by the seductions of the massed Sirens. Reporters describe Bonds as being psychologically tight [***] and that makes us think that he has been strapped to the mast to prevent himself from becoming corrupt.

Or, maybe there is some truth to the negative image. On the night that Bonds broke the individual home run record his team lost the game and were disqualified from post-season play. And, that same night, the Seattle Mariners broke the American League record for most games won in a season. A team effort award. Bonds represents the individual in baseball. Maybe that's why the collective despairs of him. But things change. We remember another great individual baseball player who still holds a record set in 1941. Remember the splendid splinter? Ted Williams still holds the modern baseball era's record for single season batting average (.406). He also used to spit on the fans. Barry Bonds, who now holds the all-time single season homerun record, will also become heroic. It just takes time and perspective.

Notes

*Boswell has to be given credit for attempting to use numbers and statistics in the attempt to make the case about Bonds' home run feat being something less than remarkable. But using alchemical mathematics to denigrate the raw feat is disingenuous and annoying to baseball fans. Bonds' feat is remarkable in any era. Even if we accept the massed media depiction of Bonds as a creep, that has nothing to do with his talent, right? [Return]

**Halberstam is at least more out in the open of his dislike of Bonds. Halberstam writes that Bonds has "also been one of the most difficult [players] to like. The stories have always been quite shocking. They are not, it should be noted, about a distant, somewhat aloof, rather private young man, who keeps himself apart from the amiable pre-game byplay that can make baseball a good deal of fun. Rather they are about unprovoked, deliberate, gratuitous acts of rudeness towards all kinds of people, other players, distinguished sportswriters. They are of a handsomely rewarded young man of surpassing talent, going out of his way to make the ambiance in which he operates as unpleasant as possible, and to diminish the dignity and pleasure of other men (and now women) who also work for a living, even if their talents are somewhat smaller than his. This is about nothing less than the abuse of power -- he has it by dint of his abilities, and he uses his power to make others' lives more difficult and less pleasant. Barry Bonds has played the game about as well as it has ever been played -- the comparisons go back to his godfather, Willie Mays-- but he has shown remarkably little pleasure in his accomplishments. He has a rare capacity to take something that should be pleasant -- playing a big-time sport at a supreme level -- and to make it unpleasant. " [Return]

***Dave Kindred wrote in The Sporting News (July 30, 2001) "There's something about Barry Bonds. There's a tightness about him, a gathering of strength and mass that is different from that in other great baseball players. He moves swiftly and surely, and yet at 6-2 and 210 pounds reminds us more of a tight end than of an outfielder fleet and graceful. The bat held 2 inches from the knob, the big man taking a little man's compact swing, Bonds hits more home runs by accident than most players hit by intent. The tightness is psychological, as well. Bonds wears a silver cross in his left earlobe, even when playing, combative and defiant of convention. And while Bonds well knows the $3,000 recliner [by his lockers]is a sitting-duck metaphor for journalists parachuting in to do another gifted-jerk piece, the easy chair still sits in front of his private TV, the furniture practically shouting, 'I'm Barry Bonds and you're not.' " [Return]