The sad saga of Barry Bonds, which brought such a stain to the sport of baseball, hopefully will have some meaning to other areas of life, and therefore maybe do us all some good.
The bottom-line on the Bonds story was this: it never really mattered what he did. For a decade now, there have been thousands of Bay Area baseball fans who've ignored the fact that he used foreign substances to double his size and strength, going from a consistent 30 home run hitter to a consistent 50 home run-plus terror at the plate. It didn't matter. He led San Francisco to a World Series and another league championship series, didn't he? No big deal. He set the career home run record while wearing a Giants uniform.
Meanwhile, Major League Baseball, which recovered from its devastating 1994 labor strife by way of the exciting home run duel between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, dug its head into the sand as Bonds played bombs away. The home run was king. No matter that home runs are exciting because their special, not run of the mill. No matter that the entire game of baseball was distorted by huge sluggers who can't field their positions or drop a bunt.
Barry Bonds is by no means the only one who used steroids and/or human growth hormone. Far from it. Baseball is rife with players who, out of nowhere, had a couple huge seasons, and in the past few years, under increased scrutiny, have just as suddenly tailed off in batting performance. He is just the only one caught allegedly lying to a grand jury.
The story of Bonds, and McGwire, and Sosa, and many others, is that our culture has become one in which people will do anything to win. It used to be that, as children, we were taught to be our best. Now we're instructed to come out ahead at all costs.
Being a very good player who led his team to the playoffs just about every year was not enough for Bonds, a player who might have gone to the Hall of Fame even without the outrageous home run records. He had to have it all.
Sound familiar? How about the folks who ran Enron? Or Worldcom?
How about our national leaders? The president and Democrat congressional leaders would rather beat each other in a political squabble than improve the condition of the country. Iraq is Exhibit A, and that continues today. A great example is the failed Social Security reform effort of 2005 that failed over Personal Savings Accounts -- a minor portion of the overall program. But the two sides locked horns on that contentious point and never achieved a solution.
People who'd been raised to do their best would have put together a great energy company, a marvelous communications firm, and would not have the nation on the road to financial ruin.
I think things are slowly changing as we here at home are catching on to the shenanigans of the nation's elite. The Bonds indictment shows that, in the end, the way one conducts themselves in their profession does matter. McGwire is more or less in exile. Sosa did penance before returning to play. Most of the Enron and Worldcom do-badders were punished. Many troublemakers in Congress have been sent home.
We need to return to the "be the best we can be" theme than "win at all costs" desperately.
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One of the really bizarre things from entertainment this year is the troika of heavy-handed anti-war movies recently released. You'll find almost no one who likes "Rendition," "Lions for Lambs" or "Redacted," even those who would be naturally inclined to appreciate their basic premise. Like movie critics. Even the reviewers, who love all liberal messages, hate these flicks.
In the good old days, it was the pro-war movies that were heavy-handed. Or have you forgotten "The Green Berets," the John Wayne primer on the Vietnam conflict. Or all the films that came out during World War II.
Bad things often come from desperation. Like the need to win at all costs. Barry Bonds always performed poorly in postseason because he got desperate. The anti-war Hollywood crowd is desperate, along with their like-minded in Congress, to get the United States out of Iraq. The tide is turning in favor of the fight again, so I think what you're seeing is desperate movie-making.
Like Bonds, Enron, and Congress, Hollywood movie-makers played to win, rather than to make the best movies they could.
