CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The problem was Barry Bonds. The BALCO testimonies combined with the commotion and compromise that led to a strengthened drug policy, one baseball executive thought, provided baseball with a special opportunity. The sport could start fresh and begin a new era of enforceable drug testing while allowing the suspicion and doubt that had plagued the previous decade to slowly recede into history. Bonds, however, would not allow baseball such a clean break from the steroid era.
The problem was that he was too good. To the discomfort of some baseball officials, Bonds would soar so high above anyone who ever played the game that no one would ever be allowed to forget this difficult decade, for he was no longer one of many great players, but arguably the best ever. Bonds already owned the single-season home run record and was set to break Hank Aaron’s career record in 2005 or 2006. In addition, between 2001 and 2004 he hit four of the top twelve slugging percentages of all time, breaking Babe Ruth’s eighty-one-year-old record in 2001, and, over the same four seasons, recorded four of the top eleven on-base percentages of all time, breaking Ted Williams’s single-season record in 2002, and then demolishing his own record by becoming the first man to reach base more than 60 percent of the time over a full season in 2004.
The result was a bitter irony that spoke to the odd and unprecedented state of baseball: Instead of celebrating the greatest player the sport had ever produced, numerous baseball officials entered 2005 lamenting the notion that they were being handcuffed by him. Bonds stood as the symbol of the tainted era, of its bitter contradictions and great consequences. Jason Giambi’s was a more open scandal, but Bonds was more emblematic of the larger complexities. If baseball suffered from the conflict of reaping the benefits of high attendance and unprecedented mass appeal while its players individually fought the taint of illegitimacy, then Bonds’s continued ascension, first past his peers and then past every iconic standard in the game’s history, served as an eternal reminder of all the sport did not do to protect its integrity when it had the opportunity. By shattering Mays, eclipsing Ruth, outdistancing Aaron, and putting the single-season home run record even further out of reach, Bonds assured that he and the era in which he played would always be present.
Thus, the enormous specter of Barry Bonds loomed, not because of his guilt or his innocence, but precisely because of the impossible question of how much of his phenomenal achievement (and by extension the feats of his peers) was real and how much was due to his use of anabolic substances. No one, for or against, friend or foe, could ever discuss the greatest player of his generation or the greatest records in the sport without in turn discussing the drugs that contributed to them. Not only would the decade from 1994 to 2004 forever be associated with steroids, but so, too, would the record books. There would be no escape, either for Barry Bonds or the sport that made him famous.
IN THE recent history of modern sport, no athlete owned a more complicated relationship to his game’s machinery than Barry Bonds. Much of the Bonds legend was due to his immense presence, his baseball blood-lines, and his incomparable achievements. Bonds was a step beyond, the signature player of the millennium playing at a distance that did not feel contrived as much as it did inevitable. Yet Bonds created his own monument, on his own terms, for his own reasons. Watching Bonds the superstar was not an experience to be shared in the traditional sense. According to convention, a legendary player would produce legendarily, becoming a defining symbol of his generation, like Mays or DiMaggio. Then, as he faded, he would allow himself to be celebrated. He would soften and the public would soften around him. He would grow old and they would age with him, the daily warfare of the past receding, or even transforming into nostalgia. His brusqueness becoming a virtue, both he and the public would lower their swords, wounds healed by his coronation as an immortal. Such was the case with Ted Williams, who fought bitterly with his public and the men who covered him and played his final game in front of a little more than ten thousand fans. Williams left quietly, on his own terms, only to be revived in the years following his retirement, living the last forty years of his life as a legend, an American icon nurtured and sustained by the generation that he represented and for which he spoke, the very generation whose daily clawing had once kept him distant.
Barry Bonds rejected this ritual. If there had been a fear that rising salaries would forever distance the players from the fans, then Bonds was that fear becoming a reality. He was single-minded in his pursuit of his potential and did not care to be claimed. He approached baseball as if he were a legendary actor whose talents were to be admired. From the nationwide audience he was protected by celluloid. From the live audience before which he performed nightly, Bonds expected the reverence given to a great Broadway thespian; he could be watched, he should be awe-inspiring, but he was not to be approached. He shattered the myths that were so comfortable to baseball and was unapologetic about his feelings. One never heard Barry Bonds blather on about the importance of the fans or the press, as did other superstars who understood their roles to be inclusive. To Barry Bonds, there were those who actually had the ability to play the game, and those who were privileged to watch them. He did not play for the public, which once it had hurt him would never be given another opportunity for reconciliation. It could watch or it could not. As one teammate said, “When Barry says, ‘Fuck you,’ he actually means it.”
Bonds would not play the hero game. If Michael Jordan and other more affable stars were cognizant of the compromises that came with being a megastar in a billion-dollar industry, they nevertheless were shrewd and politic enough to go along with both the public’s yearning to feel close to them and the league’s desire for them to elevate it as surely as they elevated themselves. Most athletes eventually learned to dismiss the negatives in their lives—the fans, writers, executives who did not favor them. Conversely, most were aware of their supporters and were grateful to them.
To Bonds, it did not matter either way. What those on the outside thought did not change the details of the job he had to do. His admirers - didn’t have to play the game; he did. They did not have to sweat, fighting fatigue, pain, and time. If he did not play well, he thought, those admirers would not be admirers for long. On the surface, he did not seem to seek the fans’ love, which made him all the more hated by a public that felt rejected.
Bonds often talked about the day he would leave the game. He would walk away from baseball, he said, and never be seen again. He was once asked what he would say at his induction speech when he entered the Hall of Fame, and instead of focusing on any of the thousands of moments that composed the Everest of his career, he immediately focused on the critics too preoccupied with his image. Bonds decided he would tell them, “You missed the show.”
TO VIEW Bonds as the greatest player in baseball was to compare his accomplishments with those of his peers. Doing so would be statistically fulfilling but wholly unsatisfying, for the components that made Barry Bonds the singular figure of his time went far beyond his slugging percentages and home run totals. There were varying ways to measure Bonds, and each approach produced a different and more fascinating picture than the last. It spoke to his complexity. He was equally revered and hated, by teammates, managers, coaches, executives, and writers. He awed them with his great skill, hard focus, and grueling dedication, yet angered them with his confounding, combustible combination of unyielding confidence and insecurity. His greatness was beyond question, and yet there existed in Barry Bonds an almost pathological desire not only to be better, but for his peers to know he was better than they were.
Bonds’s condescension to the less talented—which was to say virtually everyone in baseball—was as legendary as his bat. There was a point during one season when Bonds had struggled through a terrible slump, but the Giants were winning, in no small part because his teammates had been hitting well. One, Shawon Dunston, was on a particularly hot streak. Dunston played eighteen seasons in the majors, was a two-time All-Star, and had gained t
he respect of his teammates on every club of which he had been a part. An African American, Dunston was well-regarded for having the rare ability to break down cliques thanks to a personality so likable that he could easily hang out with players in every group. During his hot streak, which happened to coincide with Bonds’s struggles, Dunston was approached by Bonds in the clubhouse. Loud enough for the entire clubhouse to hear, Bonds said, “Hey, Shawon, ain’t that a bitch? You’re hitting like me, and here I am, hitting like you.” It was a hurtful and offensive thing to say, and it angered Dunston. The two had words, and Dunston never forgot that side of Barry Bonds.
Once, a young San Diego Padres center fielder named Mark Kotsay had summoned the nerve to talk to Bonds, asking him about a difficult element of the hitting process that Bonds seemed to do so effortlessly. Kotsay had grown up idolizing Bonds, and it seemed he was on the verge of a memorable moment listening to the master. “It wouldn’t do much good,” Bonds explained somewhat coldly. “I mean, I could tell you what I do, but you’re not me.” It was a line Bonds used frequently.
To Bonds, even the most sympathetic nonplayers were still outsiders, but when he was criticized by his peers, his response tended to be the same: “I’ll never attack another ballplayer.” At least in front of outsiders, this was true. Thus, Bonds was confounded when Jose Canseco went public with what he knew about the steroid problem. The baseball fraternity is only as ironclad as its members’ desire to stay quiet, and Bonds always believed that only players could understand the special pressures of the life. In 2002, when Canseco said he thought that 85 percent of baseball players used steroids, Bonds’s reaction was, “Why would he say those things about other ballplayers?”
Yet the two had an encounter in 1997, at a made-for-television home run derby in Las Vegas, that spoke volumes about Bonds’s insecurity. Canseco was no longer the great player of his youth, but Jose Canseco - could always hit home runs and arrived at the derby looking particularly muscular. Bonds, who was also participating in the event, saw Canseco and yelled out in earshot of the other big league players, “Dude, what have you been taking?” To some, it was classic Bonds. He gave the impression that he was always supremely confident, but needed to feel superior, needed that edge on people at all times. It was a true alpha male moment. Bonds had sniffed out Canseco as a threat and treated him cruelly. It was also an example of his mean streak. Bonds would always talk about the brotherhood among players, yet he personally set out to embarrass Canseco in front of the other ballplayers. One player who remembered the story wondered what Bonds, who in later years was considerably larger physically than in his earlier years, would have done had another player said the same thing to him.
For the bulk of his career, Bonds kept himself at a distance from the rest yet was infuriated when teammates and the public did not understand him, and wounded during the rare instances he unsuccessfully sought their affection. In the San Francisco Giants’ clubhouse, the giant recliner in front of his locker was an infamous and telling contrast to the short stools owned by the rest of the players. He was impenetrable, an intimidating, towering figure, who defied easy description, if any at all.
To Ellis Burks, a former Giants teammate, there was a particularly telling moment during the 1999 season that typified Bonds. After a road game in late July, Burks had gone back to the hotel and by chance learned it was Bonds’s birthday. Not a single player on the team had even dared approach Bonds. To some, Bonds did not deserve special acknowledgment because he seemed to be so uninterested in the personal lives of others. To Ellis Burks, this was absurd. It was a guy’s birthday, and that was special. Birthdays always meant something to Ellis Burks, who in later years would be conflicted because his fell on September 11. After the terrorist attacks in 2001, Burks thought he could never celebrate his birthday again. “It was a terrible tragedy, and I kind of didn’t know how to feel the next couple of years after. But I started to think: It was my day before, and it always has to be. I just couldn’t let that be taken away from me.”
In the lobby, Burks and infielder Charlie Hayes saw Bonds sitting by himself. They promptly took Bonds out and the three men had a great time. “I honestly think he would have sat there and not done anything,” Burks recalled. “But that was Barry. He’s not going to let you in, even if it costs him the chance to enjoy himself. He won’t come to you, but that - doesn’t mean he wants you to come to him, either. You’ve got to take your chances. He’s got his walls, but that’s who he is.”
As his career wound to an end and Bonds passed the age of forty, he became more fierce than ever, and the public responded in kind. Mark McGwire was contrite about using androstenedione, Jason Giambi embarrassed about using steroids, and Gary Sheffield angry for having gotten involved with BALCO and Bonds in the first place. Yet Barry Bonds refused the larger argument, the implications and the consequences that went beyond him. He was convinced the press, and later the federal government, had targeted him, but the fact was that his personal roots with Greg Anderson, a key figure in the BALCO case, focused the attention on him. He had demanded and received the superstar treatment from the Giants. He wanted his own security person and received it. He wanted his personal trainers to have access to the Giants’ facilities and the team accommodated him. He made it perfectly clear to the Giants that they worked for him as much as it might have been the other way around. It was also true, however, that it was exactly this star treatment that made Bonds the connection between baseball and BALCO. Greg Anderson was his childhood friend and was allowed access to the Giants’ clubhouse as his personal trainer. It was Bonds with whom Anderson was traveling when he met Jason Giambi in Japan, a fact that both frustrated and haunted Giambi as his troubles mounted. In November 2004, Bonds won his seventh Most Valuable Player award, his fourth consecutive one. He had never been able to escape the shadow of BALCO and responded to his growing part in the steroid scandal with defiance: “I don’t owe anyone a response to anything.” Two weeks later, Bonds’s testimony that he had unknowingly used steroids appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle. The dance was a mesmerizing, albeit unfortunate one, the passion surrounding him heightened by the polarizing forces of his steroid use and his complete dominance over the game of baseball.
IT TOOK a real leap of the imagination to understand completely what Barry Bonds had become. At the end of the 2004 season, he stood at 703 career home runs, only 53 shy of Hank Aaron’s all-time career mark of 755, and would likely pass Babe Ruth’s 714 in the spring of 2005. These were numbers that defined baseball like Mount Rushmore. The reason that Barry Bonds had so outdistanced his peers was that he had done something that, with the exception of Ruth, was previously thought impossible: He had mastered the game. In 2004, he walked 232 times in 147 games. By contrast, the entire Pittsburgh team walked 415 times. He owned the top three single-season marks for walks, the top two seasons for on-base percentage, and the single-season high for slugging percentage, all of which he recorded between 2001 and 2004. Once, during an All-Star Game, Bonds sat in the National League dugout, calling out the type of pitch just as the ball left the pitcher’s hand as his incredulous All-Star teammates watched in amazement. Bonds was the greatest player of all time. He was better than Ruth, Cobb, and Gehrig because they played in a segregated era and did not have to face black and Latino players who may have been as good or better. He was better than Mays or Mantle, Williams or DiMaggio because his numbers not only eclipsed theirs, but also dwarfed those of his contemporaries. Unlike those greats, Barry Bonds, in the first five seasons of the twenty-first century, suddenly had no peer.
By towering over both his contemporaries and the lords of the game, he had entered a space occupied only by Ruth. That kind of dominance had occurred in other sports. Wilt Chamberlain literally had no peer in terms of his dominance. The same was true for Wayne Gretzky, who won hockey’s Most Valuable Player award eight straight seasons. Baseball, with its rhythms, its checks and balances, its expectation of a certain degree of failure,
was supposed to be different. Like golf, it couldn’t be mastered. The elements of every play in baseball were too different too often, the variables too unpredictable. Barry Bonds had rewritten the conventional wisdom.
Bonds no longer competed against his contemporaries as much as he did against the ghosts of the game, but Bonds was still best seen through the eyes of the players who played against him. The macho, competitive world of Major League Baseball, with its cliques and biases and supercharged egos, was almost universally deferential to Bonds. “When I’m home watching the game, and Barry Bonds comes up, everyone in my house has to shut up. No one can speak,” said the flamboyant Red Sox power hitter David Ortiz. “I tell my kids, my wife, everybody, to be quiet while he’s up. You ask them, and they’ll tell you. When Bonds is hitting, cállate! ” The players, with all of their tens of millions of dollars and deep conviction of their own considerable abilities—and of the superiority of these abilities to the abilities of those around them—succumbed to the greatness of a peer. That clubhouse toughness and bravado disappeared because Bonds was so much better a ballplayer than everyone else. In a world in which challenge and confrontation was a way of life, Bonds was the player the rest of baseball did not want to challenge, one whom only the baddest pitchers wanted to confront. In his office at the Oakland A’s spring training complex in Phoenix, Billy Beane and his assistant GM Paul DePodesta computed a formula measuring a player’s on-field performance against his salary. It was an exercise Beane undertook periodically to depress himself by counting the number of players his financially challenged Oakland club could not afford, as well as to laugh about how overpaid even the best baseball players were, except for one.
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