With the Mitchell Report being released yesterday, and the whole of Major League Baseball, from the Commissioner on down, being condemned for letting steroids run rampant in the league, we can say without argument that this is one of the worst times in the history of the game. But for one man, yesterday must have spelled relief. Big time relief. Eric Gagne-on-roids-illegally-setting-saves-records relief.
That man, ironically, is the very poster child for cheating himself: Mr. Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants.
True, Bonds's name was one of the 86 current and past ballplayers cited by Senator Mitchell as having doped up, but at this point, after already being indicted on federal charges of lying about not juicing, that didn't turn any heads. Think about how shocked we'd have been if his name wasn't on the list.
Instead, this report, to some extent, vindicates Bonds. Not that he is any less guilty of cheating. But now that it's clear that so many of his peers were right there with him, he suddenly isn't the horrible, game-tarnishing bad guy he's been persecuted as for the last several years. He's just one of them.
Now all those fans who held up asterisk signs and threw syringes at his feet will have to think about doing the same to the Nice Guys. Guys like smiley Miguel Tejada. Blue collar Paul Lo Duca. Freakin' Roger Clemens, the Brett Favre of baseball for Christ's sake.
All you Dodger fans who were so holier-than-thou whenever Barry came to LA (even though your stadium was sold out every time, greedy little blue morons cramming the right field pavillion in hopes of catching a lottery ticket from the Devil himself)? No organization was cheating more complicitly than yours. If you're wondering where to stick your Eric Gagne baseball cards in light of this little scandal, I have a few suggestions.
While yesterday will go down in history as one of baseball's darkest days, for Barry Bonds, it will have marked his return to normalcy.
Keywords: Barry Bonds, Mitchell Report, San Francisco Giants, steroids
