It Ain’t No Social Crisis: Barry Bonds in Historical Perspective

Never mind the national intelligence estimates that terrorists are massing for another strike against the United States, for a far greater threat to our way of life and the homeland is posed by an angry black man. Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants is posed to become baseball all-time home run champion.

There is considerable gnashing of teeth and jeremiads from the media regarding what it means to the youth of America to have perhaps the nation’s most esteemed sporting record in the hands of a man whose achievements are tainted by allegations of steroid use. It seems that Bonds is unworthy of America’s adulation because he gained unfair advantage by cheating or manipulating the system in his favor. Please don’t let the robber barons of the Guilded Age know about this, or we will have to place an asterisk beside the names of John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. But before we follow the example of former Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick and begin to qualify athletic achievements with an asterisk, it is wise to place the quest of Bonds within some historical perspective.

There is concern among many sport journalists, especially those at Sport’s Illustrated, that Bonds will foster disillusionment with sport and baseball among the impressionable youth of America, who will be encouraged to take short cuts on the path to success. Of course, it seems that the business community offers plenty of such examples. The Enron scandal moves the exploits of Bonds into the category of small potatoes. And who said that baseball players are supposed to be saints and role models. Charles Barkley got it right when he insisted that parents should be the role models. They get up each day, go to work, and make sacrifices for their children. While athletic skills are admirable, individuals who hit a ball, shoot a basket, or kick a football should never be considered idols.

Perhaps some of this idolatry for baseball players goes back to the 1941 film Pride of the Yankees, which tells the tragic story of Lou Gehrig, who was struck down in the prime of life by ALS. But Gehrig, portrayed by matinee star Gary Cooper, never complains and considers himself the luckiest man alive. The commercial and critical success of this film encouraged one of Hollywood’s worst sporting films, The Babe Ruth Story (1947), with character actor William Bendix in the title role. In this romanticized feature, Ruth, who was abandoned by his family at an early age, takes his responsibility as a role model seriously, healing hospitalized youth with his promise of home runs.

Reality, however, can be a little trickier than the movies. Near the close of the 1920 baseball season, it was disclosed that several members of the Chicago White Sox had conspired with gamblers to fix the outcome of the 1919 World Series. While the players were acquitted in a trial, the newly-appointed Baseball Commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis suspended eight While Sox players of life. To restore faith in the sport, the baseball establishment endorsed the home run exploits of Babe Ruth. Nevertheless, the extent to which Landis was concerned with the appearance of gambling as opposed to the reality of betting was evident in the failure of the Commissioner to actively pursue allegations of gambling by Ty Cobb. Often referred to as the Georgia Peach, Cobb was a determined ballplayer willing to spike and injure another opponent to gain a competitive advantage. And off the field, Cobb was hardly a great role model. His racism and violent nature exhibited the worst attributes of Jim Crow America.

Ruth, on the other hand, exemplified the excesses of the 1920s celebrity culture with his consumerism, abuse of alcohol, and womanizing. Ruth, nevertheless, is credited with saving baseball after the so-called Black Sox scandal, making the sport strong enough to withstand the vicissitudes of the Great Depression and World War II. Yet during the 1930s, Jewish slugging star Hank Greenberg was often a subject of bigotry, and black athletes such as Josh Gibson and Satchel Paige were excluded from Major League Baseball. Perhaps outstanding white athletes of the 1930s such as Dizzy Dean and Rogers Hornsby should have an asterisk placed alongside their names because their records were achieved during the era of Jim Crow when some of the sport’s best players were denied an equal opportunity to demonstrate their abilities.

Baseball finally abolished its color line in 1947 when Jackie Robinson joined the Brooklyn Dodgers. Sixty years later baseball is celebrating Robinson’s achievement. Yet, the story of baseball integration is more complex than the sport is willing to acknowledge. The prejudice and hate which Robinson encountered is today denounced, but the slow progress of baseball integration is rarely noted. When Robinson retired in 1956, the Detroit Tigers and Boston Red Sox rosters still included no black players. And baseball would not appoint a black manager until Frank Robinson in the 1970s.

In fact, baseball struggled to incorporate black and Latino players into a conservative institution with white executives and a corporate business structure limiting competition and free enterprise through the reserve clause. The racism of the sport and nation were certainly evident as Henry Aaron confronted death threats when he surpassed the 714 home run mark of white hero Babe Ruth. Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn also compounded matters by not attending the game in which the Atlanta Brave star established the home run mark, a snub which current Commissioner Bud Selig appears ready to repeat with Bonds.

As Bonds exceeds Aaron’s home run total, many Americans like to believe that as a nation we have placed race behind us. But the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 well demonstrates that the United States still has a long way to go in exorcising our demons of race. Of course, in the case of Bonds and Aaron we are talking about two black men. This fact, however, has not prevented Bonds from receiving death threats. Public opinion polls indicate that there is a racial divide between blacks and whites in their perception of Bonds. An articulate and angry black man does not resonate well with white Americans—and it is interesting to note that many baseball fans seem much more willing to forgive baseball’s all-time hits leader Pete Rose for his gambling transgressions. However, many insist that their opposition to Bonds is not about race, but rather the fact that the San Francisco star is allegedly achieving his record through the use of illegal steroids. Of course, drugs are nothing new to the game as is well illustrated in Jim Bouton’s Ball Four with accounts of amphetamines easily available during the 1960s and early 1970s. And Mickey Mantle, one of baseball’s great heroes of the post World War II period, struggled with issues of alcohol abuse.

But the steroids debate with Bonds is more complicated. Bonds was well on his way to achieving Hall of Fame credentials well before the era of steroids began in the mid 1990s. Bonds denies steroid use and has not been convicted in a court of law, although this is not true for the court of public opinion where Bonds has been tried and convicted through leaked testimony and best-selling books such as Game of Shadows. But even if we accept these allegations as truth, it is again important to examine the historical context.

Following the labor stoppage which led to cancellation of the 1994 World Series, baseball officials feared that fans would not return to the game. Much as faith in the sport was restored by Ruth following the Black Sox scandal, the sport was saved through the 1995 home run contest between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, who both exceeded the 61 home run season mark established by Roger Maris in 1961. Despite rumors that steroids might be involved with their exploits, McGwire and Sosa were proclaimed as heroes and fans returned to the ballparks in droves. As revenues increased, baseball executives, Commissioner Bud Selig, and the players’ union looked the other way. The message was made clear in Major League Baseball’s sexist ad campaign, “the chicks dig the long ball.” It is within this environment that ostensibly many athletes, including Bonds, turned to steroids. The new home-run friendly ballparks were full and the athletes larger. Ownership was benefiting from the slugging onslaught , and manifestations of innocence that Major League Baseball knew nothing about these developments is about as honest as Inspector Renault (Claude Rains) in Casablanca closing Rick’s because he is shocked to learn that gambling is occurring while at the same time he accepts the night’s winnings.

So Bonds has become the poster boy for the age of steroids due to his very success, although figures like McGwire certainly embarrassed themselves with equivocal congressional testimony. What are we to make of the Bonds record? He is the product of an era in which ostensibly many players, including the pitchers Bonds faced, were using performance enhancing drugs. On the other hand, there is not evidence that drugs improved the extraordinary hand and eye coordination of Bonds. He is an exceptional athlete. I will applaud rather than boo home run 756, but like other baseball greats before him Bonds is reflective of his times and Major League Baseball’s ambiguous history, pleading American innocence while seeking to maximize profits. We have more to worry about in the summer of 2007 than Barry Bonds.

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