I was thinking about Barry Bonds this past week when a memory came back to me. It was about 10 years ago and I was playing softball in a church league. I had become the captain of this softball team and I almost never attended the church. I would hardly consider myself a "ringer" as I am not a home-run type hitter. After all, every team had a player or two who not did not attend the church they were playing for.

In a four abreast outfield style, I was their right-center fielder. One game, a ball was hit high in the air toward me, but into the sun. I played a shallow right center so I turned, ran back to where I thought the ball would end up and tried to find the ball in the setting sun. I saw it at the last second as it struck me in the left chest, but as I fell to the ground, I caught the ball against my body and glove.

I popped up and showed my catch. It was the third out of the inning. I never thought it was a big deal, until the other team disputed my "play of the day" type catch. I remember saying, "Hey guys, if I didn't catch it I would have thrown the ball in to keep the runners from moving up."

I recreated the catch for the overwhelmed ump. His decision was it was a catch, inning over. I remember saying, "Guys, this is a church league, not the majors. If you can't trust honesty in this league, who can you trust?" The Catholic team we were playing was not amused and called me "cheatin' dog" the rest of the game.

I remember being heckled a few times in various sports, and I've certainly been hated a couple more times. I've been threatened many times at sporting events, once having to fight on ballpark parking lot. But this time it was different.

We later played the same team in the championship, and they continued heckling with "cheatin' dog" over and over. I led off the game and growled at their pitcher as he set himself to pitch. I hit a double and howled a wolf howl at second. The rest of my team started barking at the opposing team.

We beat the Catholic team and barked our way to victory in a round robin tournament. There are still guys on both teams that do not remember my name, only that I was the "cheatin' dog."

The story above does have a point. Once you have a reputation it will follow you the rest of your days, on and off the field. So I guess this is how I feel about the Barry Bonds.

Bonds is one of the most talented and widely disputed greatest baseball player of all time as he closes in on the home run record. He is probably the greatest player I ever saw play in my lifetime. Yet if I were a GM, I would never have him on my team.

As a matter of record, his teammates have not enjoyed playing alongside him. I know that if I were a teammate, I would have set fire to Bond's clubhouse recliner that he sits in, like a he is a king on a throne. But looking at Bonds career numbers one would be hard pressed to find better from anyone else. Sure there are things that a player did better, like Ty Cobb's batting average and stolen bases, or Lou Gehrig and Cal Ripken's endurance. But Barry Bonds numbers do not lie, or do they? There is always that ugly word steroid that looms over his career.

I read a recent quote by Dusty Baker, a man who knows Bonds well. Baker stated "Hank stole bases when you really needed them. I'm not saying Barry didn't, but it was a different time. They'd steal out of necessity [back then] rather than want."

This statement struck me as a perfect reasons it is hard to compare players of an era of the game to another. The game has changed and continues to evolve every 20 years or so. Plus, if I had to add another name to the steroids era, I would call it the greed ball era. Stats are everything now, contracts are made on these and the money thrown around would make some CEO's blush. I am all for capitalism, but how much money does a man need.

Once more the greed and corruption of the run and gun 1980s has come back to haunt us. Bonds is a left over from the junk bond era mentality, and will probably be the largest icon from the era of the steroids.

Given my strong feelings, I wanted to get an unbiased opinion on Bonds, so I asked my wife. She is a casual baseball fan, exposed to this world because of her relationship to me. Her best memories of the game are in the bleacher seats of Old Busch Stadium looking at the backsides of the likes of Brian Jordan, Ray Lankford, JD Drew and Jim Edmonds, just to name a few. I figured her opinion would be unbiased by the sideshow of Bonds. But, I was wrong.

"I can't stand him," she said. "It is one thing to be confidant and swim upstream against the flow of society. It is another to be a lying cheat. He couldn't even tell the truth about the steroids. How could an athlete, who is one of the greatest in his game, not know what he is taking into his body? He lied on to courts and he will continue to lie. I have no respect for him, he could not be a man and own up to what he had done. Plus, I watched his reality TV show, and he hid behind his son. He was blaming reporters for causing his family heartache with the negative publicity. I don't think the reporters were dosing him with steroids. That is the most cowardly thing I have seen in a long time."

Now I never saw the whole episode of "Bonds on Bonds" that she mentioned. I had seen highlights of the show, and knew that I would not be watching this show. I watched the clip she spoke of, and I had to agree with my wife. It is a shame when a man blames others for his families pain rather than admit his own mistakes have some small bearing on his family and their mental wellbeing. I guess I should start blaming my parents for not having a last name of Buck or Caray, so I could become a great broadcaster.

Feeling betrayed in my quest for justice, I asked a few more people I know who are not baseball fans. The sentiment was almost unanimous, Bonds must be loved or hated, but there are few between.

Most females were harsher than males in the judgment of Bonds. The less a fan of baseball the person was, the greater their dislike seemed to be for him. Most called him a cheater. Perhaps it was transference, but I was objectively conscious of how I asked the questions and wording. How do you feel about Barry Bonds breaking the home run record? How do you feel about Barry Bonds as a person? If you had to use one word to describe Barry Bonds, what is that word? Those are about as straightforward, unbiased and open-ended as a journalist can be.

In the sea of Bonds' articles that will be written this week, I got the nickname of "Cheatin' dog" by one small encounter, yet it is still remembered by many that were around. How much more will we remember Bonds for the clear and the cream, the home runs and the circus sideshow.

I'll let you pick your nickname for him.

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Sources:
MLB.com
ESPN