Bonds, the HR chase & the race issue

Let me ask, was Aaron white? Hell no.

Did Aaron face more obstacles than Bonds in his career? Hell yes.


Bonds has made his own bed, with a hell of a lot more money than Aaron ever made. And he's half the man Aaron was. I couldnt' give a shit if he was purple.

 

damn, i'm devastated that i couldn't have listened to mike greenberg break down for us the troubles hank endured, because clearly mike greenberg knows more about it than the average black man.

 

and all whites look bad by association because of mark mcgwire, floyd landis, jason giambi?

 

John Wayne Gacy, Jeffrey Dahmer Ted Bundy.

Just to add a few more guilty by race association.

 

He didn't break it down. He just proclaimed his respect for what Aaron went through and how he handled it. Frankly, your statement strikes me as pretty damn racially biased. Are we to think that no white people can express their respect for Aaron breaking Ruth's record despite the death threats and other racially motivated bullshit he went through?

Guess what? Some of us are capable of empathizing with people who are different from us. Apparently, that is beyond your capacity. That is your failing, not Greenberg's or mine.

I think you just can't get over the fact that nobody bought your bullshit about people wanting to keep Bonds from passing Ruth as if anybody still views Ruth's total as the real record. Are you trying to say there is racism motivating some conspiracy to keep a black man, Bonds, from breaking a record held by another black man, Aaron? More bullshit.

You want to say that Selig's bias against Bonds is personal? I'll buy that. Selig is tight with Aaron and I can see him wanting to protect Aaron's record, especially from somebody he sees as failing in his role as a representative of the game in the way that Bonds has over the years. But that's not racism. That's personal.

 

McGwire and Giambi, like Bonds, are lying, cheating sons of bitches. As touched as I was in McGwire's lovefest with the Marises after 61 and 62, it makes me sick he was juicing his way past a man who was hated because he dared take the god-given right of Mantle to overtake the Babe.

Aaron had nothing unnatural in his body and I would bet faced more death threats BECAUSE OF HIS COLOR than Bonds has.

 

Why should Bonds be held to Lofty standards of Representing Baseball. Baseball DON'T love Bonds. Bond got it right. Fuck Baseball. Make the money, and keep it stepping. For someone that grew up with a baseball in his crib - Bonds gotta be angry with something about that shitty ass game.

He don't have to spell it out to you -YOU KNOW! Besides, Bonds NEVER wanted to be the representative of this cheating ass sport - CONDONED by upper management.

More or less like Marvin Harrison - Just give me the damn ball and leave me alone.

 

Timeout, timeout. Who do you think are?

 

I must've missed that book: "Give Me The Damn Ball" by Marvin Harrison.

Was Keyshawn a ghost writer?

 

Hey, have of that was coherent. A nice improvement, Sportsbruh.

Too bad you still have it wrong. Bonds is much more of an attention hound than Harrison. It's not even close.

I understand him feeling bitterness toward the game, particularly how his father was viewed.

And personally, I don't give a shit about Bonds representing the game, either. But Selig does, and I can guarantee you that the commish doesn't want Bonds as an ambassador of the game. Which sucks. I think of all the times I've heard Bonds talk about not sharing his secrets while he is active. I respect that. I'd love to hear what he really thinks and how he really approaches the game once he retires.

Bonds is a tremendously intelligent baseball player and I hope he does get past his bitterness someday and share some of that with future players.

 

Hate to tell you, bruh, but every player in the game represents baseball, just like we all represent our employers when we're out there doing our jobs (and even when we're not). It's the price one pays for doing a job where you're not an anonymous shlub in a cubicle whose work isn't seen by people outside your department.

Some players have higher expectations because of their status in the game. Bonds, who acheived that lofty status with his play, is one of those who is held to a higher standard.

I understand Bonds' attitude, to an extent. He wants to do his job, go home and be left alone. However, it's an extremely naive attitude, particularly for someone who grew up around the game, to think that was ever even a possibility.

I always respected the fact that Bonds didn't give a shit what anyone thought about him. While he was surly, I always liked that fact about him. But the minute he started cheating, he showed that he does, in fact, care what people think of him and he was willing to sell out to make people remember him in a certain way (he wanted to be remembered as the GOAT, now he's just a goat for steroids in baseball).

And of course there's a racial element to this story. It's not about a black man breaking a black man's record as some of you try to make it out to be.

It's about how the media has long been portraying this chase as one that the majority of baseball fans want to see fall short, when in fact only 52 percent say they don't want Bonds to break the record. Most WHITE fans don't want to see it broken by Bonds. So all this time that we've been hearing that FANS in general don't want it broken, the media was actually only portraying the view of the sport's pale spectators.

I think it's quite interesting how skewed the media portrayal of public opinion has been. I don't think it's a conscious decision of the all-powerful white media, but it's an inherent bias. The media is largely made up of white males. White males view the world a certain way and they know (largely) how other white males view the world. So when we're hearing that fans don't want Bonds to break the record, we're mostly hearing what white male reporters have come to know through their own circles (and yes, I'll allow that many white male members of the media have friends, contacts, acquaintences of other races, but it obviously hasn't changed the overall makeup of what they believed to be true).

If I were a sociology professor, I'd be using this and the OJ case as major parts of my classes. Hell, they'd make for an interesting media class.

Speaking of O.J., I was watching the SNL special last night and they showed Norm MacDonald's smiling Weekend Update announcement of the verdict: "It's official: Murder is now legal in the state of California." That cracked me up.

 

don imus and the duke lacrosse players were unavailable for comment.