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Unsportsmanlike conduct? You can respect Bonds' bat and not his attitude
Updated: Monday August 20, 2001 2:31 PM
Sports Illustrated senior writer Jack McCallum touches on a Hot Button issue each Monday on CNNSI.com. After you read Jack's take, give us yours. So where is our national obsession with the home run now? Three years ago you couldn't collect your mail without hearing the postman deconstruct the exploits of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, but these days Barry Bonds, the dour San Francisco Giants slugger, conducts his one-man assault on McGwire's single-season dinger record in relative obscurity. I never thought I'd say this, but I feel a little sorry for the man.
But the primary reason America is not reaching out to touch Bonds is, well, Bonds. To many fans -- and I agree with them -- he represents much of what is wrong with today's athlete. He seems distant and self-absorbed, joyless and put upon as he plays what is essentially a child's game, albeit one with significant pressures. I've read stories and heard reports that he's either misunderstood or has changed for the better, and I'm not going to say it isn't so. If that is true, though, the message hasn't reached the public at large. But if we have reservations about Bonds the man, should that diminish the drama of the chase, or, more to the point, the significance of the achievement should he bash his 71st sometime in September? It's a question not even worth asking because "should" doesn't matter if "will" is the reality. I'll give you an interesting "should" question, though: If Bonds breaks McGwire's record, should Bonds get strong consideration as Sports Illustrated's Sportsman of the Year? Let me say in advance that I have nothing to do with the selection, a process that isn't nearly as scientific or conspiratorial as many people believe it is. (I am free to lobby the powers-that-be at the magazine about my personal choice, of course, but they are equally free to tune me out, as they did when I suggested my need to do a story about bodysurfing on Tahiti.) But I can tell you that the idea of Bonds as Sportsman does not offer an agreeable scenario for we folks at SI. To say that Bonds is not overly cooperative with the press is to say that Tony Siragusa is not overly diminutive, and, beyond that, there is the elusive factor of the "sportsman" in Sportsman. Does Bonds possess enough of that extra dimension, that special something that seems to be part of the award? That is for others to answer. Fortunately. But if Bonds hits 71 or more, my feeling is that he has to be thrown into the Sportsman mix. The achievement is monumental, and its significance only grows when you consider that a) Bonds has his team in the thick of a pennant race and b) 38 of his dingers have either given the Giants the lead, tied the game or put them within one run of the opposition. Then there is this small matter: McGwire and Sosa were named co-Sportsmen after their home run battle. Each year presents a different group of candidates, of course, and this one has already given us an extremely fit man on a bicycle and an extremely big man with a basketball. But it seems that Bonds, an extremely unsympathetic man with a bat, belongs right there with them. Sports Illustrated senior writer Jack McCallum writes about a Hot Button issue every Monday on CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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