IS BARRY BONDS A BLACK LEON TROTSKY????
Oread Daily http://oreaddaily.blogspot.com/
Barry Bonds as Leon Trotsky...that's a comparison you don't see made
everyday. If that intrigues you so be sure to read the commentary
below by Dave Zirin .
Barry Bonds holds the record for most home runs ever, like ever and
he's out there available for the taking and no major league team seems
interested.
Sounds like the bosses are whiteballing Barry to me.
Even as an old man, just last year he lead the entire National League
in walks and had 28 home runs in 132 games while hitting .276. He had
a better season than one helluva lot outfielders gainfully employed.
Now we all know about the steroids investigation and all that, but
since when did baseball's big shots become so righteous.
The MLB Players Association finds it odd and has stated publicly that
they think collusion has taken place among all 30 MLB teams to keep
Bonds from playing baseball this year and ever again. They do not
understand how any team from a league known for giving players second
and third chances who have shown a propensity for hitting home runs
has not signed the all-time home run king.
But then Barry is black and has been indicted by the federal
government for perjury.
Indicted, but why?
Mike Gimbel,former consultant on player evaluation for the Boston Red
Sox and the Montreal Expos writes:
"Bonds has not been convicted of anything. He has not been accused of
betting on games or throwing games. He has not been accused of
assaulting anyone. Bonds has been accused of not being a nice guy by
the media, but is that a crime?"
Bonds has been accused of not telling the truth to a grand jury
investigating BALCO. He does not own BALCO and does not distribute
steroids on behalf of BALCO. Why was the grand jury investigating
Bonds? Weren=92t they supposed to be investigating BALCO? How did that
=93investigation=94 of BALCO turn into a witch hunt directed against MLB
players? Clearly, BALCO wasn=92t the real target in the racist campaign
against Bonds."
=2E..In effect, MLB teams are willing to lose money rather than hire
Bonds. Isn=92t that the definition of a =93blacklist=94? The actors,
singers, directors, etc., who were =93blacklisted=94 during the McCarthy
era witch hunt were money makers for the entertainment industry, yet
no owner would hire them! Isn=92t that exactly what is happening with
Bonds?"
Weren=92t many of these talented performers indicted and some convicted
for refusing to cooperate with grand juries and dragged before
government-staged hearings in front of hundreds of cameras and
re****ters? Years later many of those =93blacklisted=94 were apologized to,
but did that apology make up for the destruction of their livelihoods
and their personal lives during the McCarthy =93blacklisting=94? Of course
not!"
=2E..Years from now, when MLB is forced to apologize to Bonds for their
actions, that apology will never make up for the crime that it is
inflicting today on him and on the many fans who admire the athletic
greatness that Bonds has personified as a player. I also admire him
for his unbending, =93in your face=94 attitude, as he=92s been enduring
this=
constant attack from the big business media, especially the s****ts
talk radio and cable channels that have to fill 24-hour-a-day air time
by creating controversy and scandal where there would have been little
or none before those media outlets were created."
The following is from The Edge of S****ts blog.
Boss's Boycott: The Bonds Vanishes
By Dave Zirin
The Commissar Vanishes is a coffee table book for only the dourest of
coffee tables. The hard-covered volume is a photographic compilation
of the way that Josef Stalin systematically erased his chief political
opponents, Leon Trotsky and his followers, from the history of the
Russian Revolution.
Page after glossy page plainly displays the desecration of memory at
the service of dictator****p. It shows before-and-after photos of
people either airbrushed to invisibility or crudely vandalized, their
faces blacked out with an ugly scribble.
Meet Barry Bonds, the Leon Trotsky of Major League Baseball. In 2007
Bonds broke the most hallowed record in s****ts, passing Henry Aaron's
record for home runs. When he wasn't injured, this maestro of the
batter's box packed San Francisco's ballpark, despite a team that
stank like cottage cheese left on a radiator. At season's end, the
Giants refused to re-sign him, with owner Peter Magowan saying, "We're
going in a new direction; that would not be going in a new direction.
The time has come to turn the page." That is surely his right, but the
page hasn't just been turned, it's been raggedly erased.
All traces of Bonds, the greatest player in baseball history, have
vanished from the Bay. The left-field wall no longer carries an image
of Bonds chasing Hank Aaron for the crown. There is no marker of where
Bonds hit home run number 756. There is no reminder that Bonds ever
even wore a Giants uniform.
But it's not just Magowan trying to =93disappear=94 Barry Bonds. He has
been blackballed in a blatant and illegal act of Major League
collusion, a bosses' boycott. Yes, Bonds' fielding has become painful
to watch in recent years, as the seven time gold glover limped around
the outfield on knees grinding together without cartilage. But despite
the agony of movement most of us take for granted, Bonds still hit 28
home runs in 340 at bats, led the NL in walks, and had an on base
percentage of .480. Since 1950, only Ted Williams, Mickey Mantle, Norm
Cash, and Bonds himself have recorded higher OBP's. [Cash=92s epic
season was an anomaly in an otherwise middling career. That a player
could have a brilliant year out of nowhere, used to be one of the
charms of baseball. Today they would be accused of sprinkling steroids
on their corn flakes.]
Maybe Bonds can no longer roam the outfield, but there are at least a
dozen AL teams that could use a designated hitter with a .480 OBP, not
to mention a player whose every game would sell tickets and every at-
bat would provoke baited breaths and empty bathrooms.
In this case of blackballing so obvious it would shame a Dartmouth
frat house, one would think the media would be raising hell. But they
have largely been yipping collusion lackeys. Bill Simmons, ESPN.com's
S****ts Guy, wrote,
"Opening Day came and went without Bonds for the first time in 22
years, and nobody seemed to notice. I didn't think about him for more
than two seconds all spring. Did anyone? Can you remember being a part
of a single "I wonder where Bonds is going to end up?" conversation?
Did you refresh ESPN.com incessantly in hopes of a Bonds update?...Of
course not. No one cared. The best hitter since Ted Williams is gone
and forgotten. We wanted him to go away, and he did."
There is one problem. Bonds doesn't want to go gently into that good
night and is pu****ng his union to fight back. He has asked the Players
Association to file collusion charges on his behalf and the union has
served Commissioner Bud Selig with papers. [There is a certain irony
here as Bonds was hardly Big Bill Haywood during his career. In 2003,
he became the first player in thirty years to not sign the Player's
Association's group licensing agreement.]
The Player's Association's efforts on Bonds behalf have also met with
high profile derision. Newsweek's Mark Starr wrote "The union
approaches new heights of absurdity when it bothers to investigate
whether collusion has ended the career of baseball's all-time home run
king, Barry Bonds, who can't attract an offer to play anywhere this
2008 season. What the union sees as possible collusion, once an
honored practice among owner****p, I see as a rare display of common
sense."
Bonds, according to Starr, is "widely regarded as a cancer in the
clubhouse."
This is moralistic spew. The idea that baseball owners would ruin
their own team's chances because they have collectively agreed to
"turn the page" is a violation of Bonds' rights and the unwritten
social contract they have with fans. And when one considers the
absence of saints on Major League Baseball teams, even on the God
Squad in Colorado, it is all the more drenched in hypocrisy.
Mike Gimbel, who is a former adviser on player trades and acquisitions
to the GM's of the Boston Red Sox and the Montreal Expos, wrote it
well.
"Bonds has been accused of not telling the truth to a grand jury
investigating BALCO [the Bay Area Lab Company, implicated in steroid
distribution]. He does not own BALCO and does not distribute steroids
on behalf of BALCO. Why was the grand jury investigating Bonds?
Weren't they supposed to be investigating BALCO? How did that
'investigation' of BALCO turn into a witch hunt directed against MLB
players?"
Good questions. Bonds deserves far better than to be forced into
retirement and have his history coarsely expunged. The overriding
ethos of the s****ts world is that of the meritocracy. If you are good
enough, then you get to play. Yet a man who can get on base 48% of the
time, has been told to go home and a new generation of fans will never
see the Mozart of the batting cage. This is about more than a baseball
player. It's about people in power deciding on utterly unjust grounds,
who gets to take the field, who gets to be heard, and even who gets to
be remembered. Somewhere, Stalin smiles.
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