Rick Kaplan
Staff Writer

(OAKLAND, May 12) – As the rookie among my esteemed colleagues at Loveofthegameproductions.com, I bring little ‘expertise’ to the lofty legal and historical questions that have recently been raised herein concerning one Barry Bonds and his home runs.

Having dropped out of NYU Law School after three months, I don’t know the law, at least much beyond the surface grit of parking tickets and living wills. And I know the game only as a fan and a sandlot player, having not so much as ever spoken to a major league ballplayer, unless you count shouting childish stupidities at the Yankee Stadium visiting bullpen in the ’60s.

Click below for more of Rick’s essay!But I do have an opinion about all this, as regular readers of the site realize, I’m sure. And it is decidedly a ‘unpopular’ one.

In responding to “Why Don’t They Pick On Someone Their Own Size?,” I concur with Chief Justice Ed Stern’s eloquent argument that there is a one-sided ganging-up of forces arrayed against Bonds.

At the same time, I find more questionable the assertion that Bonds is responsible for bringing this scorn upon himself.

However, I find great wisdom and courage in Stern’s attempting to defend a transcendent, though flawed, player from predatory bullies.

On the other hand, I also sympathize with Justice Lurie’s sentiment, in his comments on Stern’s opinion, when he firmly and clearly states,”I will forever judge (Bonds) as the greatest home run hitter that I ever saw play, but one who achieved immortality through HGH and steroids.”

For Lurie, the only question is whether or not steroids were involved. He only is looking at the performance on the field, and wants to know if it meets the criteria of being free of illicit enhancement.

For Chief Justice Stern, Bonds’ personality, sadly, is a great vulnerability and asset to his enemies, and his “downfall” is not being on the moral plane of a Henry Aaron.

Speaking again with great clarity, Justice Lurie dimisses the dimension of Bonds’ personality or morality as being irrelevant to his ruling. And he justly frames his argument for an objective standard in considering home run records – ‘did he or didn’t he?’ – against the comparable and unacceptable behaviors of numerous other ballplayers.

In summary, in striving to identify the elements of this case, both Stern and Lurie judiciously find shortcomings in Bonds that undermine his baseball achievements.

True enough. I cannot argue with these assertions.

However, it is beyond baseball where I find the importance of Barry Bonds in 2006.

Chief Justice Stern calls our attention to a recent New York Times news page one feature on Bonds and says, “This is not the sports section we are talking about. This is the section which describes the shortcomings of the administration, the murders of the innocents in Darfur, the misdeeds of Ken Lay and his ilk. How did Bonds make the front page?”

We must answer that question. Why is the word ‘hate’ so universally promoted in the national media (in strange and dark contrast to the giddy tone of these early-season, homer-happy days) in association with a baseball player? This is not Adolph Hitler or Jim Jones. This is a clean-up hitter, not a mass murderer. Don’t we have better things to vilify in this world?

Is this really about steroids and baseball? Is Barry Bonds the greatest villain in baseball, or American, history, as would appear from the coverage his story is getting (Please see my earlier columns, such as “Blaming Barry,” “Bud Selig’s Glass House,” and “Bonds V. Board of Education,” in regard to MLB’s virtually uninterrupted history of cheating, gambling,and ‘performance enhancement’). Is he really Benedict Arnold?

There is certain naivite concerning Henry Aaron and all this. Whatever his true personna, Henry Aaron did not acquire a public image of defiance, such as Barry Bonds has. There is a coded message here, in my opinion, that an African-American who appears to be more compliant (regardless of the reality) is preferable to one who doesn’t take a lot of harassment (This is not to diminish Henty Aaron, who stood up to plenty, including the raw indignities of a more overtly 1970’s racist society that hated him for breaking Ruth’s record, and a culture that subjected him to be fired upon with a rifle while in the outfield as a young Braves minor leaguer.)

What a long, strange trip it’s been. Now white America is defending Henry Aaron’s sacred record. Is there something wrong with this picture? We must realize that this issue is to a large degree breaking along racial lines, and increasingly so every day. Many African-Americans see this as something more than a matter of a home run record, and this cannot be ignored.

For me, then, this isn’t about baseball-on-the-field at this point. This is about picking on an especially vulnerable personality and a tailor-made scapegoat for baseball’s market-driven drug excesses. And, in the larger, New York Times context, a scenario for maintaining social controls and classes in a society that is under intense pressure to enforce cohesiveness and loyalty.

Hardly anyone is bothering Mark McGwire or Jason Giambi, or Sammy Sosa for that matter. And it’s not because they don’t have 713 home runs

This could be the Dreyfuss Case of 2006. Barry Bonds isn’t my favorite player, but I won’t be part of making him the bad guy, and a scapegoat in a racist movement.

(In 1894, a French officer of Jewish background was railroaded on apparently rigged evidence and convicted of espionage in a case that lingered over French society for more than ten years and which was a forum for promotion of an alleged “Jewish conspriacy,” as much as it was a trial of the specific, dubious charges against Dreyfuss.)