Bye-bye Barry

"One of these days, Barry Bonds will look in the mirror and see what the rest of us see. Nothing. None of this matters anymore. He can't undo the lies, the injections, the arrogance, everything that follows him today and tomorrow and beyond. The home runs he hits will be ignored, the records he sets empty. To the baseball world, Bonds is dead. And, much like Bruce Willis' character in The Sixth Sense, he's the only one who doesn't realize it."

Jeff Passan's column, "The Ghost of Barry Bonds", caught my eye today. It perfectly captured my feelings about Bonds. Anything the man accomplishes now seems pointless. If the accusations are true and I don't see how they can't be, then everything since 1999 has been a lie.

I'm angry at myself for never taking the allegations about Bonds seriously. I glossed over them and dismissed them as accusations by people who were jealous or unhappy with his unfriendly attitude. I had a bad case of denial.

My anger stems from a feeling of betrayal. I feel betrayed as a fan of Bonds, as a fan of the Giants and as a fan of baseball.

There have been many players who have admitted to using steroids and while I felt betrayed then, it doesn't compare to how I feel now. Perhaps if Bonds had been a nobody before he took steroids, I wouldn't feel so strongly. Maybe if he was on another team, I wouldn't feel as bad. But he was already a hero, and a hometown hero at that.

What seems to make it worse is that before he took any steroids, many "experts" and fans already considered him one of the best players in the history of the game. He could hit for average and power. He had speed on the bases and in the field.

Yet everything he has accomplished with his considerable talents seems to matter very little now. To be melodramatic, everything that should have been a source of pride is now a source of shame.

On top of that, what he has done can't be undone. It's impossible to untangle his statistics from those of others to correct or erase them. The only solution left is damage control, which means either firing Bonds or forcing him to retire.

Of course, the Giants don't intend to take either action. Instead, they announced that they will throw a celebration when Bonds hits home run number 715. Passan likens it to "Enron throwing a birthday bash for Ken Lay". I agree. It seems that the front office has a worse case of denial than I did.

I believe the sooner the Giants and Bonds split, the better it will be for the fans, the team and the game.