The Consequences

DELIVERED WITH the blunt force of a sledgehammer, Game of Shadows is to Barry Bonds what the Dowd Report was to Pete Rose in 1989--it destroys the reputation of one of baseball's most accomplished players. Whether Bonds never hits another home run or hits 48 more, which would give him the most of all time, he never can be regarded with honor or full legitimacy. Shadows painstakingly catalogs him as a serial drug cheat, and thus the eye-popping stats that he has accrued stand all too literally as too good to be true. � At the same time, the book smashes the apologia of the blind-eyed supporters in and out of baseball who want to believe that what quacks, waddles and swims like a duck is not, in fact, a duck. Only the most delusional cling to the life ring of denial. Rose himself, and his fans who believed more in him than in the truth, perpetuated his fraud for 17 years, until, in book form, he decided, "Well, O.K., I bet on baseball."

Then commissioner Bart Giamatti, as would any reasonable person who read the Dowd Report, knew better and said as much in 1989. At Rose's request, the agreement he signed to be banned from the game included no official finding on whether he bet on baseball. At the news conference to announce the agreement, though, Giamatti was asked if he thought Rose did bet on baseball.

"In the absence of a hearing and therefore in the absence of evidence to the contrary...," said Giamatti, who paused, then continued, "I am confronted by the factual record of Mr. Dowd. On the basis of that, yes, I have concluded he bet on baseball."

One major difference between Shadows and the Dowd Report is that it took two reporters, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, to ask the questions that formerly were the responsibility of the commissioner's office. Commissioner Bud Selig, borrowing from the Mark McGwire school of oratory, has made it clear that he wants nothing to do with the past. To confront it would be like trying to clean up a toxic waste dump--much too messy and dangerous.

With Kafka-esque logic, Selig has argued that because there were no steroid tests before 2003, there is nothing to investigate. But of course there were no tests because the owners and players didn't want them, and public opinion and the threat of congressional intervention had yet to force their hands. Just last month Selig, once again brandishing the argument that collapses upon itself, said, "There is no empirical data that Barry did anything wrong," adding, "There is nothing to investigate."

Such words would seem even more evasive, if not downright obstinate, in the wake of Shadows. Selig has made it clear that he won't lift a finger to the record book. Fine. But what he can do is answer the obvious question about Bonds as honestly and directly as Giamatti did about Rose, entering confirmation into the public record without erasing the records. In the meantime, anyone who cares about baseball, including Hank Aaron and, eventually, the writers who vote for the Hall of Fame, is part of the jury that could assign Bonds forever to the land of make-believe.

In 1998 Bonds hit 37 home runs--the fourth-best total of his career but barely more than half of what McGwire hit. The sleek, five-tool player was ignored in the lovefest that was the great home run race between McGwire and Sammy Sosa. Jealous of McGwire, and knowing that owners were content to leave steroid use unchecked to cash in on the home run boom, Bonds knew what to do. That off-season, the authors write, he began what became a massive doping regimen involving years of use and a cornucopia of drugs. The transformation was like nothing that ever has happened in the game. Through 1998 Bonds averaged one home run every 16.1 at bats. Since then he has hit home runs almost twice as frequently--one every 8.5 at bats. The seven best home run frequency rates of Bonds's career all have come in the seven seasons since the authors say he began his steroid use. Remember, we're talking about a player who turned 35 years old in the first season that the authors say he played while using steroids. At an advanced baseball age, Bonds has played better than at any other time in his career.

If he passes Aaron, Bonds will have hit 345 homers beginning with that season when he turned 35--which would be 26% beyond what anyone else ever has done. And with those 345 home runs, Bonds would essentially add the equivalent of Joe DiMaggio's entire career (361 home runs) on top of a career that at age 33 already resembled Frank Robinson's.

How is that possible? The authors say that Bonds used at least 10 performance-enhancing drugs and had such an insatiable appetite for them that he blew off the advice of his own trainer and took them even when his body was due at least a week's respite in between steroid cycles.

Is this a Home Run King? A Hall of Famer? Does having attained a certain level of success give a player carte blanche to do anything he wants thereafter, however illegal, immoral or fraudulent, and still be ushered into Cooperstown as if such behavior never happened? Are the brightest senior-year students excused for cheating, the best employees excused for cooking the books, the greatest players excused for juicing? Ask if Rafael Palmeiro gets a Hall pass for his positive steroid test in the last year of his career. Ask if Joe Jackson's .356 career batting average gave him the right to abet the fixing of the 1919 World Series. Ask Rose if his 4,256 hits made it O.K. for him to bet on baseball.