Dear Millionaire Baseball Fans,

I am writing to you today begging you to put away your checkbooks. In the near future, Barry Bonds will hit his 756th home run for the career home run record. To the person who catches this ball, whether it is out in McCovey Cove or some other ballpark in America, I know you will be looking to cash in big. You only have to look at recent history to know that catching a milestone baseball is like hitting the Powerball. However, I am asking you, as a favor to fans the world over, do not bid on this baseball.

Bidding money on this baseball would be giving validity to a record no one, not even Commissioner Bud Selig, believes Bonds should hold. I don't care that he hasn't failed an actual drug test. The people cheating the tests are far ahead of the scientists creating the tests that it is almost a futile effort to test. For instance, there is no reliable test for human growth hormone so there is no telling if Bonds is still taking anything.

There are mounds of circumstantial evidence that Bonds used and abused performance enhancing drugs. Just look at him from 1998 when he, like the rest of us, watched Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa resurrect the game. He went from an average-sized guy to a giant. You don't get that big, that quick without a little help outside the weight room.

You also have to ask how a man that hadn't ever hit 50 home runs in a season all of a sudden can go off for 73. You have to ask how a professional athlete who previously had little issue with injury, all of a sudden is so injury prone (hint: it isn't age, just look at the other 40+ year olds still playing).

Then there is the crème de la crème of evidence – "Game of Shadows." You have Bonds' own words, under oath before the BALCO grand jury, stating that he was given something. To believe him, that all he was given was flax-seed oil, is preposterous. He knew what he was taking. He knew that it was going to help him achieve his ultimate goal of knocking Hank Aaron out of the record books. He wanted the attention that was shared by McGwire and Sosa all for himself, at any cost.

There's also Bonds' personal trainer, Greg Anderson, who would rather rot in jail than testify before the same grand jury. He was, reportedly, Bonds' steroid source. If he opens his mouth, Bonds loses everything. If he opens his mouth, he loses everything.

Steroids and its impact on the game have even gained the attention of Congress. When Congress gets involved in sports, there are serious problems. Players past and present lied to Congress about it. They should all be thrown out of the game, and this includes Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. If betting on baseball can earn it, don't you think outright cheating should?

As far as I am concerned, the single season home run record is still 61. When Bonds hits 756, I will not raise my head, I will not cheer, and I will not acknowledge it. He is no better than McGwire, Sosa, Jose Canseco, and the rest. The only thing he's done better is conceal his crimes.

What's worse than Congressional involvement is the apathetic nature of the fans through all of this. They still spend money to see Bonds play. They may boo him, heckle him (I did it a year ago), and do everything they can to make his time in their city unbearable, but they still go to the games.

It's enough we're spending the money to go see this freak of nature play, why spend the money on a baseball that should be worthless? It would be great to turn on a San Francisco road game and see an empty stadium (and I don't mean Miami or Washington where the fans don't give a damn anyway). That would be the ultimate reaction from the fans that we just want Bonds to take his bat and go away.

I wish the fans in San Francisco would open their eyes about this. They go and they cheer and they make him out to be a hero. What kind of message is this to kids and others playing, not just baseball, but any sport? Cheating is not ok and these people are stating, through their acceptance of Bonds that it is.

Win at all costs is a dangerous mantra to be giving to anyone, let alone children who idolize sports celebrities. Please stop going to the games. Please stop giving these false accomplishments credence. Please stop making a mockery of the game of baseball. 

So, millionaire fans, please do the sports world a favor. Put down the checkbook. Put down the cell phone to your investment broker. Put away the gold card. There are far too many other young, talented, and most importantly, clean guys playing major league baseball today. The spotlight should be on them. We should be rooting some of them to have the kinds of seasons, cleanly, that Bonds needed steroids to achieve. Don't do this man a service and the game of baseball a disservice by legitimizing this hollow achievement.

Sincerely,
Michael Khouri