Barry Bonds and Eugenics

I'm going to take a short break from the in-joke of picking whatever's playing on iTunes at the moment as a title and molding a post around it. Did anyone pick up on that? I feel like I've been given a gift, people, and it would be irresponsible not to get sidetracked and sort it out. See, Barry Bonds wants you to know that steroids are no big deal. [The original link for the story on the MSN home page was even funnier, something like: "Barry Bonds on head, testicles -- OK!"]

Say...what? No, really: Barry Bonds called a press conference last week during spring training to tell people that his head size has not grown and his testicles haven't shriveled into little pits. Stephen Jay Gould would be so proud -- after all, large chunks of The Mismeasure of Man deal with the late 19th/ early 20th century pseudo-science of Eugenics and the metric of head size as a measure of intelligence. So we now that Bonds isn't any smarter, but credit him for being almost completely to the point in his observations, especially when you compare it to Jason Giambi's fruitless impression of Ronald Reagan at the Iran-Contra hearings at his own press conference. Two very different approaches to the same problem, which can be summarized as thus:

Bonds: I may have done these things that are associated with anabolic steroids and human growth hormone, but it was in the service of the greater good.

Giambi: I may or may not have done some things, but I can't tell you right now, so you'll just have to trust me to never tell you the truth.

To be fair, Giambi was already behind the 8-ball and Bonds initiated his own press conference as a preventative measure. Garry Sheffield thinks Bonds is full of shit, and it's a foregone conclusion for anyone who's kept even a passive eye on the sport of baseball over the past decade, but we'll pay good money to see Frankenstein lumber past Hank Aaron -- and hey, why not Josh Gibson or Saddaharu Oh, if his body can hold up -- for the home run title. Bonds recognizes his role as an "entertainer," which is what that press conference was all about.

Should be interesting to see what comes out of next week's congressional hearings on steroids, where both Bonds and Giambi have been subpoenaed to testify. Curt Schilling has already RSVP'd for the event -- which is sort of like placing John Denver in the same room as Dee Snider and Frank Zappa, but that's how it goes with a kangaroo court. And Bonds? Definitely on the 'roids. Wife knows it, kids know it, even his dog knows it. And the fact of the matter is that we can't rewrite history when it's convenient and, say, pull Ty Cobb out of the Hall because he was a douchebag. Bonds, like Cobb, is simply a product of his environment.

Get In or Get Out

The powers that be were really afraid that the Hall of Fame would become littered with plaques for a whole ton of undeserving Yankees, so they went ahead and revamped the credentials for the Veterans Committee. With the old Veteran's Committee, you always had to duck and wonder where the next Dom DiMaggio was coming from; a handful of undeserving candidates got inducted on the main ballot and the Hall suffers from bloat in general. But there was a fear that the Vet's Committee would stand in opposition of the dominant voting ideology and sneak a Roger Maris or a Thurman Munson through the back door.

Ron Santo and Gil Hodges picked up a few votes in this year's election, while Tony Oliva lost a few and Jim Kaat (fourth in overall voting) appeared on the ballot for the first time. Tony Oliva took it pretty hard during a spring training press conference and blamed geography/ playing in Minnesota for lack of exposure; the guy was a really great pure hitter (and led the AL in hits five times between 1964-1970) but not a HOFer by the magic standards. Hodges is probably even less interesting, though he has the Brooklyn Dodgers dynasty working in his favor. I can't believe Santo isn't in the Hall already -- extremely durable and he was probably the best 3B in the league during his prime. And one more thing about Jim Kaat, who has a lot of wins and a career ERA that compares favorably to the league average ERA: the guy won sixteen straight Gold Gloves at his position. Surely, that's some kind of record. Take that, Ozzie Smith!

What we've learned from the new Veterans Committee, which has now expanded to include everyone in the Hall of Fame: the passionate defense of Joe Torre's playing career will never approach a critical consensus. It's a red herring. Which is funny, because that was the whole reason for revamping the Veterans Committee in the first place. Turns out these guys are even more fiercely protective of the Hall's legacy than the Baseball Writers Association. Here's Tom Seaver on this year's deadlock, the second straight election with no new old-timers: ``I'm of the opinion it's going to be awfully hard [to elect additional members], and maybe that's how it should be.''

Yup.