re Barry Bonds
"As a blatant abuser of steroids and human growth hormone, he has
deprived the game of integrity and turned its record books into
mush."
Jeff Pearlman, writer for ESPN
The following article mentions steroids, Victor Conte, and BALCO
(there's your MFW bonus attraction), but, more importantly, imo, also
looks at racism as a possible cause for the hatred Barry Bonds has
been receiving.
I read every word in the following article. The Subject line was
culled from a quote within the text, btw. And, in the back of my mind,
I wonder if Bonds will live to make that historic 756th home run.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...+runs%2C+bonds http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q...+death+threats
It's a crazy world. I hope Bonds hits 800 home runs. Or 777. That has
a nice ring to it.
The Unforgiven: Jack Johnson & Barry Bonds
NEW YORK - As the San Francisco Giants slugger approaches Henry
Aaron's record for career homers, this probability seems to be turning
otherwise rational people upside down, as Bonds has encountered an
almost surreal level of hostility. The rage was on full display this
past weekend in Boston, where Bonds had already made friends in 2004
by saying, "Boston is too racist for me."
But the bellowing fury directed at Bonds is hardly resigned to the
good people of Beantown. Outside the San Francisco Bay Area, it has
become a peculiar kind of national obsession.
Sports has always had its anti-heroes, but the antipathy directed at
Bonds by both media and "fans" has been of a different texture. It
doesn't just boo: it seethes.
Some say they can't stand Bonds because they suspect - with the smug
certitude of having received holy writ - that he has used steroids.
Others say it is his "surly attitude," or "bad sportsmanship."
But much of the reaction to Bonds is simply bad old-fashioned racism.
Not since Jack Johnson has an athlete become the repository for so
much racial animus - and revealed broader gaps in Black and white
perceptions - as Barry Lamar Bonds.
JACK JOHNSON
In 1908, when Jack Johnson became the first Black heavyweight boxing
champion, his victory created a serious crisis in the "conventional
wisdom" about race. When Johnson told the world to go to hell and
openly consorted with white women, crisis became hysteria.
The media whipped up a frenzy around the need for a "great white
hope" (a phrase coined by author Jack London) to restore order to the
boxing world - and the world in general. Former champion Jim Jeffries
was coaxed out of retirement and said, "I am going into this fight for
the sole purpose of proving that a white man is better than a Negro."
In the weeks before their fight, Johnson - in stark contrast to the
standard African-American posture of the day - was more than willing
to be heard. In a July 4, 1910, Philadelphia Inquirer story titled,
"Johnson believes he's Jeff's master," he is quoted as saying, "I
honestly believe that in pugilism I am Jeffries' master, and it is my
purpose to demonstrate this in the most decisive way possible. ... Let
me say in conclusion that I believe the meeting between Mr. Jeffries
and myself will be a great test of strength, skill, and endurance. The
tap of the gong will be music to me."
This might seem tame by contemporary standards, but at the time it was
verbal TNT. To say he was a white man's master a mere fifty years
after the formal end of chattel slavery was simply explosive.
But Johnson wasn't merely despised: he was hated by one America and
revered - if not loved - by another.
A piece in the Dallas Morning News titled, "Negroes praying for
Johnson," reads, "Some others fear trouble if he [Johnson] wins and
are consequently boosting Jeffries. ... For the first time
Independence Day will be enjoyed as a real holiday by the Negroes
tomorrow."
When Jeffries and Johnson finally squared off, the ringside band
played, "All Coons Look Alike to Me," and promoters led the all-white
crowd in the chant "Kill the nigger." But Johnson was faster,
stronger, and smarter than Jeffries, knocking him out with ease. In an
early incarnation of the information superhighway, young children
working as "telegram runners" ran through city streets shouting out
the progress after each round.
As Johnson wrote in his autobiography,
More than 25,000 people had gathered to watch the fight, and as I
looked about me, and scanned that sea of white faces I felt the
auspiciousness of the occasion. There were few men of my own race
among the spectators. I realized that my victory in this event meant
more than on any previous occasion. It wasn't just the championship
that was at stake - it was my own honor, and in a degree the honor of
my own race. ... The "white hope" had failed.
This was no idle boast. As the New York World wrote, "That Mr. Johnson
should so lightly and carelessly punch the head of Mr. Jeffries must
come as a shock to every devoted believer in the supremacy of the
Anglo-Saxon race."
But far more important than respect gained from the New York
World, was his folkloric status in the Black community. As one
spiritual sang,
"Amaze an' Grace, how sweet it sounds,
Jack Johnson knocked Jim Jeffries down.
Jim Jeffries jumped up an' hit Jack on the chin,
An' then Jack knocked him down agin.
The Yankees hold the play,
The white man pulls the trigger;
But it make no difference what the white man say,
The world champion's still a nigger"
After Johnson's victory, there were race riots around the country - in
Illinois, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Texas, and
Washington, D.C. Most of the riots consisted of white lynch mobs
attacking Blacks, and Blacks fighting back.
This reaction to a boxing match was the most widespread racial
uprising that the U.S. had ever seen - or would see - until the 1968
assassination of civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Right-
wing religious groups immediately organized to ban boxing. Congress
actually passed a law banning boxing films.
Even some Black leaders pushed Johnson to condemn African Americans
for rioting, and to toe the line. But Johnson remained defiant. For
this mortal sin - and a variety of venal ones - he faced harassment
and persecution for most of his life. He was forced into exile in 1913
on the trumped-up charge of transporting a white woman across state
lines for prostitution. As Johnson wrote in his autobiography, "In the
Ring and Out, as soon as he defeated Jeffries, "From that minute on,
the hunt for the 'white hope' was redoubled, and when it proceeded
with so little success other methods were taken to dispose of me.
Booker T. Washington, the Black leader who founded the Tuskegee
Institute and believed that Blacks should abstain from any kind of
agitation, couldn't stand Johnson. He said with unvarnished scorn,
I can only say at this time, that this is another illustration of
the almost irreparable injury that a wrong action on the part of a
single individual may do to a whole race. It shows the folly of those
persons who think that they alone will be held responsible for the
evil that they do. Especially is this true in the case of the Negro in
the United States today. No one can do so much injury to the Negro
race as the Negro himself. This will seem to many persons unjust, but
no one can doubt that it is true. ... What makes the situation seem a
little worse in this case, is the fact that it was the white man, not
the black man who has given Jack Johnson the kind of prominence he has
enjoyed up to now and put him, in other words, in a position where he
has been able to bring humiliation upon the whole race of which he is
a member.
Washington's contempt for Johnson didn't stop him, however, from
setting aside a special assembly room at his Tuskegee Institute to
hear special telegraphic reports of Johnson's fights.
A far different reaction to Johnson was articulated by Washington's
great rival, W. E. B. DuBois. DuBois, a towering intellectual, was one
of the first to try to put the moralizing about "violence" in sports -
and the street violence associated with Jack Johnson - in some sort of
context. As he wrote in the Crisis, the organ of the NAACP, in 1914,
There is today some brutality connected with boxing, but as
compared with football and boat racing it may be seriously questioned
whether boxing deserves to be put in a separate class by reason of its
cruelty. Certainly it is a highly civilized pastime as compared with
the international game of war which produces so many "heroes" and
"national monuments." Boxing has fallen into disfavor - into very
great disfavor. The cause is clear: Jack Johnson ... has out-sparred
an Irishman. He did it with little brutality, the utmost fairness and
great good nature. He did not "knock" his opponent senseless.
Apparently he did not even try. Neither he nor his race invented prize
fighting or particularly like it. Why then this thrill of national
disgust? Because Johnson is Black."
BONDS
Barry Bonds is today's Jack Johnson. Like Johnson, he is a dominator
in his sport, a pantheon player: the only person in baseball history
with 500 home runs and 500 stolen bases, a seven-time Most Valuable
Player, and eventual home run king.
He is also, like Johnson, someone who plays with a mammoth chip on his
shoulder, a chip handed down - as one writer put it -"like an
heirloom" from his father, Bobby Bonds, a talented player of the 1960s
skewered by the media and front offices for his own pro-pride, pro-
union politics.
It is hardly difficult to find sportswriters or sports fan blogs
slamming Bonds as a steroid using, foul-mouthed malcontent. But even
players have broken ranks to jump on his back. Boston Red Sox pitcher
Curt Schilling, a man with GOP senatorial aspirations, said, "He
admitted to cheating on his wife, cheating on his taxes, and cheating
on the game." (Actually, none of that is true. Leaked grand jury
testimony had Bonds saying he unintentionally used a steroid cream.
The other two allegations are unproven.) It was so bombastic, sports
columnists and talk radio yappers criticized Schilling and he was
forced to offer an apology.
But the same writers who slammed Schilling perhaps did so because he
was taking their shtick. The amount of media detritus hurled at Bonds
boggles the mind.
As Jeff Pearlman, a writer for ESPN wrote,
Barry Bonds is an evil man. A truly evil man. As a husband, he has
cheated on both his wives. As a father, he has been absent and
indifferent. As a role model, he has spit at autograph seekers and
directed kids to "f-- off." As a Giant, he has held a franchise
hostage and refused to help teammates in need. As a blatant abuser of
steroids and human growth hormone, he has deprived the game of
integrity and turned its record books into mush.
Jemele Hill, one of the scant few African-American women with a high
profile voice in sports wrote,
God, can you smite Barry Bonds before he breaks Major League
Baseball's all-time home run record? (OK, maybe smiting is a little
extreme. Could you conjure up some locusts every time he bats? Give
him a few boils? Crack a stone tablet over his head?) I know the Bible
says vengeance is your department. But might you consider speeding
things up?
Dan Le Batard, a columnist for the Miami Herald, said something very
incisive about Bonds' relationship to the media in an interview with
the remarkable sports blog "The Starting Five":
He's got no use for us. Every step of the way we agitate his
defiance all the more. Every step of the way he has less reason to
trust us. Think about it this way. If Barry Bonds and Terrell Owens
are the two most controversial athletes in sports, do they have an
arrest between them? What are they really doing that makes them so
polarizing? They are urinating on some of our Utopian ideas of
sportsmanship.
Owens is a revealing parallel. He has never been accused of ingesting
anything anabolic, but still is torn apart by the press for our
entertainment. But it's the comparison to Jack Johnson that carries
more than abstract similarities. Like Johnson, Bonds has also earned
the ample attention of the federal government that has joined the
media in the Get Barry Brigade.
In 2004, Attorney General John Ashcroft, a man perhaps best known for
losing his Missouri Senate seat to a dead man while slobbering on the
Confederate flag, hosted a press conference to announce a forty-two-
count indictment against four men in the Bay Area Laboratory Co-
Operative (BALCO) case. It was odd for the U.S. Attorney General to be
front and center, with the cameras on full blast. This was like
shooting a fawn with an AK-47 - a case of extreme overkill. The worst-
kept secret was that the case had nothing to do with BALCO's leader, a
former bassist for the band Wild Cherry named Victor Conte. This was
about BALCO's most famous client - Barry Bonds.
Since that time the FBI has even approached players about wearing a
wire in an effort to get Bonds on tape admitting steroid use. The FBI
could then presumably prosecute him for perjury in the BALCO case,
where he said he unintentionally used a steroid cream. Mike Celizic,
who reported the story for MSNBC, called the investigation a "witch
hunt. It's not about cleaning up the game; it's about putting Barry
Bonds in jail." He is right. Federal prosecutors have made it all too
clear that they want to imprison Bonds for perjury, tax evasion,
anything short of kidnapping the Lindbergh baby. One writer cited an
agent saying, "He's our Capone."
The anti-Bonds cottage industry has become so bombastic, so
disproportionate to his alleged offenses, that it is having an ugly
and divisive effect on society.
Consider an ESPN/ABC News poll released in May. Black fans are more
than twice as likely as their white counterparts to want Bonds to
break Aaron's record of 755 homers (74 percent versus 28 percent) and
nearly twice as likely to think that the slugger has been treated
unfairly (46 percent versus 25 percent), according to the poll. Black
and white supporters of Bonds were then asked why they believed that
the slugger is so hated. About 41 percent of Black fans said suspected
steroids use was the reason, while 25 percent cited race and 21
percent blamed Bonds' "in your face" attitude. By contrast, two-thirds
of white sympathizers cited the steroids issue, with virtually none
mentioning race.
When asked about the poll, Jemele Hill said: "It's too bad some people
are more concerned with race than right. Blacks have been unjustly
persecuted in the court of law and public opinion, but supporting one
lout doesn't erase, compensate [for] or change those injustices."
But the Black-white divide on Bonds is not about people being "more
concerned with race than right." Rather, it represents a visceral
response to the way Bonds has been subjected to criticism when white
players with reputations of steroid use haven't gotten nearly the heat
he has. For instance, suspicions have swirled around future Hall of
Fame pitcher Roger Clemens, but he hasn't come close to receiving
Bonds' level of media and investigative scrutiny.
I have been a guest on both mainstream sports and Black radio, and the
Bonds discussion is like visiting two alternate universes. Mainstream
radio is a veritable "I hate Barry" parade. Callers typically deflect
charges of racism by saying: "We're not racists. We just hate his guts
because he's a cheater!" But on Black radio, I am sometimes seriously
asked, "Do you think Bonds will be physically harmed?" That I'm asked
such a question points up how dangerous the atmosphere surrounding
Bonds' march to history has become.
AARON'S STANCE
Many make hay of the fact that Aaron has said that he himself would
not be there when Bonds breaks the record. As Hill wrote, "Hank Aaron
deserves better than to see his record broken by an unlikable,
arrogant cheater who has done nothing but heighten stereotypes of
Black athletes. He is unquestionably a Hall of Famer and the best
player of this generation - but he is not nearly the man Aaron is, and
should not surpass him in any way."
Others make the case that Aaron's refusal to be there is proof
positive that there is no racism - abject or otherwise - in their
despising Barry Bonds.
Aaron's refusal to attend is more than a little ironic.
In April 1974, Henry Aaron of the Atlanta Braves broke Babe Ruth's
seemingly unbreakable home run record when he hit his 715th home run
off Al Downing. The racism that surrounded Aaron was off the charts.
In 1973, as he closed in on the record, the U.S. Post Office reported
that Aaron received 930,000 letters, the most of anyone not named
Richard Nixon. Much of it was in the category of death threats.
Samples read,
"Dear Hank Aaron, How about some sickle cell anemia, Hank?"
"Dear Nigger, You black animal, I hope you never live long enough
to hit more home runs than the great Babe Ruth."
And so on. This was not some bygone, pre-civil rights era - but the
1970s, right on the heels of the civil rights and Black Power
movements.
Aaron later wrote, "The Atlanta fans weren't shy about letting me know
what they thought of a $200,000 nigger striking out with men on base."
When Aaron finally broke the mark, baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn
didn't show. Today Bud Selig - a close friend of Aaron - has given
every indication that he will follow in this proud tradition and not
be at the game when Bonds breaks the mark. Ironically, this is
happening right when baseball is wringing its hands over the
historically low number of African-American players - 8.5 percent, the
smallest number since the days of Jackie Robinson. Torii Hunter, the
All Star Centerfielder for the Minnesota Twins said in April that
maybe these two things were connected. "The one big, Black face in
baseball is Barry Bonds, and they see he is constantly being
scrutinized and he has never tested positive for anything," Hunter
says. Black kids "think, 'That game is not for us.'"
It's worth noting that despite all the speculation, we don't know why
Aaron is refusing to be there when Bonds breaks the mark. He won't say
- although he hasn't been shy about doing interviews where he makes
clear that he will not attend.
Barry Bonds' brother Bobby Jr. took Aaron to task, saying,
Hank Aaron does not even want to support Barry. Being a Black man
going through what he went through in the past and not supporting my
brother, it kind of makes me look at him like, "Are you serious,
brother? Are you serious?" Cut the steroids out, just look at my
brother as a human being. He stole bases, he ran, he caught the ball.
It's so hard to justify what's going on with baseball and how they're
treating him.
TWO AMERICAS
The constant decrying of Bonds has resulted - once again, as in the
case of Jack Johnson - in two decidedly different schools of thought.
I've already cited the ESPN poll revealing a clear racial divide on
Bonds. A majority of fans - 58 percent - think Bonds should be in the
Hall of Fame. That's ten points higher than a similar poll conducted
last summer. Among Blacks, 85 percent think Bonds belongs in
Cooperstown, compared to 53 percent of whites.
Of course we live in different times than the days of Jack Johnson.
Stadiums don't play, "All coons look alike to me" when Bonds goes to
the plate. And as I have written before, the Bonds obsession in the
media and among fans is not purely about bigotry run amok. Envy, rage,
grudges, and anger combine to make a gumbo of resentment (Pearlman and
Jemele Hill for example have both written some excellent antiracist
sports articles.)
The argument is not that everyone who is against Bonds is a racist or
anyone who believes in harsh penalties for steroid use is a racist.
People are free to hate Bonds all they want. But they should ask
themselves from where all this animus springs.
Almost a century ago, DuBois said of Jack Johnson, "Of course some
pretend to object to Mr. Johnson's character. But we have yet to hear,
in the case of white America, that marital troubles have disqualified
prize fighters or ball players or even statesmen. It comes down, then,
after all, to this unforgivable blackness."
At the end of the day, being a surly, press-hating, arrogant sports
superstar has proven to be something all-too-excused by media
conglomerates and fans. But to be all these things and also have black
skin? That clearly has remained unforgivable.
Dave Zirin is the author of Welcome to the Terrordome: The Pain,
Politics and Promise of Sports (Haymarket Books, 2007), A version of
this piece appears in the current print edition of the International
Socialist Review. /copy and paste from
http://blackathlete.net/artman2/publ...ry_Bonds.shtml
aka
http://tinyurl.com/2j4ml6
--
Curt
Bonds kidnapped Lindbergh baby? 
Linear Mode
