TBA

In the end, history will remember him more for his colossal steroid consumption than for his colossal circuit clouts. Next week Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams will publish Game of Shadows, an analysis of Giants slugger Barry Bonds' Senior Biochemistry Seminar thesis "On Baseball: I Took Cattle Growth Promotion Hormones and Ovulation Induction Drugs So I Could Hit More Home Runs than White People."
If even half of the claims made just in the excerpt of this new book are true, then Bonds should be forced to leave the Giants and move in with Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, and Rafael Palmeiro at the Jose Canseco Home for Disrespected Athletes in Butztown, PA. Once they finish arguing about what color to paint the den and where to put the couch, they can reminisce about their Trenbolone highs, their Deca-Durabolin lows, and that one time they all took a bunch of Norbolethone and went to the Pink Floyd laser show in downtown St. Louis.
Baseball is the most interesting of our American sports, and the most difficult to play well. So difficult, in fact, that many players resort to taking steroids and other substances in order to gain an unnatural strength advantage, or to enhance mediocre or declining skills. If a player is willing to slather himself with hormonal unguents or inject himself with narcolepsy stimulants, then today's long fly-ball out can become tomorrow's home run.
Major League Baseball has historically made a laughable effort to prevent or punish the abuse of these illegal drugs. After all, lots of home runs fill stadium seats. If that is an insufficient incentive to ignore the problem, the Major League Baseball Players Union also stood in the way. The MLBPA is a litigious juggernaut when the subject of testing or sanctioning its members is broached. It took an embarrassing intervention last summer by the US Senate to force MLB to think meaningfully about the problem. Bonds current predicament is a result of the much brighter light being shown on the game's elite sluggers.
A brief look at some of Bonds' statistics shows just how marked the difference is between his pre-and post-steroid accomplishments.* Bonds has been in baseball a long time--since 1986. He has always been a phenomenal player. In 12 seasons from 1986 to 1997 Bonds hit 374 home runs. That is an average of 31 per year, or one home run every 16th time he came to bat.
In the seven seasons from 1998 to 2004** he hit 329 homers, an average of 47 per year, or one dinger every nine at bats. By turning himself into a human science fair, as Fainaru-Wada and Williams allege, Bonds hit nearly the same number of home runs twice as efficiently in half the time. Better living through chemistry, indeed. Bonds is now six home runs shy of Babe Ruth's career total and 47 home runs behind Hank Aaron's all-time mark of 755.
It is hard for us to admit that there is a sad side to this story because Bonds is such a contemptible and spiteful person (and a cheater), but it is inarguable that had he simply maintained his average non-steroid performance until he retired, Bonds would have been elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame on the first ballot and regarded as one of the greatest players of all time. He was a complete player, a premiere defensive outfielder and base-stealer during his first 12 years. The vengeful jealously into which he sank during the 1998 McGwire-Sosa home run race led him to lay his own mortal greatness on the line for a shot at immortality in baseball's record books. Alas, notwithstanding his great accomplishments, he should never be elected to the Hall at all now, even if he surpasses Aaron's great achievement.
At any rate, however this plays out, it simply cannot happen soon enough that the teams break camp and start the season. Play ball, play ball.
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*These statistics appear in similar form in the cnnsi.com excerpt cited above.
**Bonds played in only 14 games last season due to knee injuries.