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More on the Barry Bonds myopia – read a great post on Sports Biotch comparing Barry Bonds to Ty Cobb and the opposite ratings on the outrage meters.

The other day, I was discussing baseball history with the Sports Biotch, and it struck me; Barry Bonds is a cute, cuddly, remarkably well-adjusted version of Ty Cobb. Ty Cobb makes Barry Bonds look like Strawberry Shortcake.

Cobb and Strawbarry are hardly the only cheating a-holes to become baseball icons. I could compare Barry to any number of elite players with total success. However, I won’t, because Barry’s attitude–”the whole world is trying to screw me, but that’s okay, cuz I’m the best”–is so much like Ty’s more antisocial view of life: “I had to fight all my life just to survive. They were all against me. Tried every dirty trick to cut me down, but I beat the bastards and left them in the ditch.” Also, perhaps not coincidentally, Ty and Barry are probably the best hitters in the history of the game. Cobb is the clear king of hitting for average (career BA=.366), and I don’t need to tell anyone what Bonds can do.

Check out a list of Ty Cobb’s “achievements”

-Sharpened his spikes to make infielders fear injury every time he took a base. Regularly threatened to injure infielders who tagged him out.
-Probably fixed games. Let off by the Commissioner when Cobb threatened to reveal further corruption.
-Kicked a hotel chambermaid in the stomach after she expressed disapproval at his use of the N-word.
-Had a long history of domestic violence.
-Refused to join his team on a Cuban tour, saying “darkies’ place is in the stands or as clubhouse help.”
-Fought a black groundskeeper during Spring Training over the condition of the practice field. Choked the groundskeeper’s wife when she intervened.
-Attacked a heckler who had lost his hands in an industrial accident. When spectators told him to stop because his target had no hands, Cobb said, “I don’t care if he has no feet.”
-Slapped a black elevator operator for being “uppity.” When a black night watchman intervened, Cobb took out a knife and stabbed him.
-After Cobb’s son failed out of Princeton, Cobb traveled to Princeton to beat and horsewhip his son.
-At the plate, arranged to fight an umpire under the grandstand after the game. Teammates broke up the fight after Cobb had knocked the umpire to the ground and began choking him. “I fight to kill,” Cobb said at the time.

Yet did/does anyone talk about Ty Cobb the way they do Barry Bonds?

Ty Cobb didn’t really get punished for his entertaining, yet ridiculously unacceptable behavior, and it didn’t tarnish his legacy. Cobb was elected into the Hall of Fame on the inaugural ballot by one of the largest margins in history. Cobb got many more votes than Babe Ruth, who was elected in the same year.

This is precisely why I will not participate in the argument of the sanctity of baseball’s records and/or tradition being the reason why Barry Bonds is being singled out. You mean the tradition of excluding black players and celebrating avowed racists like Ty Cobb? No matter what people want to say about the game being the same and the records being equal, it’s not. There was the deadball era (whatever that is), bigger ballparks, the juiced ball, the higher pitching mound, and … helloooo … segregation! The steroid era is just another in a long list of the ways the game has evolved. And to say that Barry’s 756 or 762 is tainted is at best intellectually lazy.

1) Is Bonds derided so much and so often for his various misdeeds because he deserves a tarnished legacy, or due to the influence of uniformly negative portrayal in the media?

2) Does the media have ulterior motives and/or unique reasons to rail against Strawbarry? Barry’s relationship with the media is fairly complicated, and I don’t really blame Barry for being unfriendly to the media; the journalistic attacks on his alcoholic father definitely made an impression on the young Barry. Are journalists trying to make an example of Bonds because of his particularly antagonistic attitude towards members of the media?

Baseball writers have waxed poetically for years on the beauty and grandeur of a game that’s been historically full of scandal of the drug, steroid, and gambling variety. For years these writers hid the seedy truths of the game and now seem hellbent on pinning the ills of all of sport squarely on the shoulders of Barry Bonds because he’s the low hanging fruit. I must say it again – baseball sucks. But not because the game sucks (necessarily).More because it’s custodians have been doing it a disservice for years and no one can see the folly.

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