Free Barry

Last week, Barry Bonds, baseball’s all-time home run leader, was indicted by a federal grand jury on four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice for allegedly lying in 2003 about his use of steroids (like anyone believed him, anyway). Whether or not Bonds ends up doing jail time – which is, apparently, a very real possibility – it would seem that his career is likely over, and his shot at being inducted into the Hall of Fame may be as well. While I’m not much of a Barry Bonds fan, something about these charges strikes me as unfair and, frankly, kind of ridiculous. Yes, obtaining and using steroids without a prescription is illegal and, if Bonds committed the crime, he should be punished accordingly, as should every other baseball player who broke the rules. But four counts of perjury? Obstruction of justice? Are we maybe going a little bit overboard here?

Of course, this isn’t just about steroids, or about Barry Bonds – it’s about the “integrity” of one of baseball’s most cherished records and, by extension, of the game itself. It’s about people who think that if our “national pastime” is tarnished, so is our national fabric. But while baseball clearly has a lot of symbolic significance in this country, it’s still just a game. A GAME, PEOPLE! Maybe, instead of crucifying athletes for taking performance enhancers, we should just stop taking professional sports so goddamned seriously. In fact, I found it kind of ironic that Bonds’ indictment was announced on the same day as Alex Rodriguez’s agreement with the New York Yankees on a 10-year, $275 million contract. It seems to me that, at the same time we’re telling athletes not to cheat, we’re giving them more and more incentive to do just that.

The thing is, Barry Bonds isn’t the disease; he’s merely a symptom, and so are steroids. The real problem here is a level of hero worship in this country that leads to $275 million contracts for guys who dress up in costumes and hit a little white ball with a stick. I’m not saying that athletes shouldn’t be well paid, but does it bother anyone else that A-Rod is set to make more than a third of the gross domestic product of Liberia? Same goes for actors – maybe we wouldn’t have a massive writers’ strike in Hollywood right now if we weren’t paying Tom Cruise $20 million a film to prance around the screen and complain about the dangers of psychiatry. I know that entertainment is one of our biggest industries – and, in the interest of full disclosure, the industry that I plan to go into when I graduate from school – but come on. We’ve just had the bloodiest year yet in a war that we can’t seem to extricate ourselves from, the dollar is weak and we’re a year away from what may very well be the most depressing presidential election in history (when I hear the words “Hillary” and “Rudy” together in the same sentence, I can’t help but throw up in my mouth a little). Don’t we have better things to worry about than Barry Bonds?

Sources:
http://sports.yahoo.com/mlb/news;_ylt=AgeXKTO6N7wUQAmV7uBLrYgRvLYF?slug=ti-bondsreaction111507&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/17/sports/baseball/17bonds.html?em&ex=1195448400&en=ab901c4b4c6bb85d&ei=5087%0A