The price of being the best -- The Barry Bonds story

The baseball season is just around the corner.

Barry Bonds' 40th birthday is less than six months away.

For those Americans out there who have made hating Bonds a new national pastime, its time you dug deep into your dictionaries, because I am sure you all are just salivating to reproach the best player ever.

The funny thing about those people out there who lower themselves to slander a baseball immortal, is the fact that they all are usually unable to comprehend the amazing things Bonds is able to do.

You cannot believe that a man is reaching the prime of his career after playing baseball for close to 20 years.

The only thing left for you to do is to degrade his talents by saying that he uses steroids.

Reporters and fans of the game across the country think they are so smart by digging into Bonds' past and finding that he used to weigh only 185 pounds. They saw that he used to be a tall and lanky outfielder, who stole 50 bases in a year once. The pundits ask, how could this skinny kid get so strong?

Then they say, hey, Bonds' best home run output before he hit his record-setting 73 home runs, was a mere 46. Where did all of his power come from?

Their only response is that Bonds must have taken steroids because there is no way he could beefed up so much, gotten that much stronger, or IMPROVED that much, without some sort of synthetic drugs to help him.

You would think that with so many smart people out there working on analyzing Barry Bonds, that someone surely would have seen that he has one of the strictest and toughest work regimens of anyone in the game.

Maybe instead of poking fun at the man, they should have instead found something positive to say about him.

They failed to see that Bonds is an inspiration for everyone out there playing baseball, because he is still getting better. How can anyone in the whole world hate a man who proves to the world, that despite winning three MVPs in the early years of his baseball career, he is still not the best player he can be.

When he was 36-years old he saw flaws in his game, much like he is able to pinpoint flaws in opposing pitchers, and he re-dedicated himself to becoming a baseball GOD.

He didn't take steroids, rather, he studied film on pitchers with more enthusiasm than ever. He went to the weight room, working out harder than ever before, because he knew that if he was going to play baseball into his forties, he was going to have to add some muscle to his thin frame, and get in the best shape of his life.

So then what did he do? He became the best, or rather continued to be the best, and he won three more MVP awards (although it should have been four more), and he finally won a batting title, and he had the best postseason, numerically speaking, ever.

For everyone who continues to this day to state Bonds' abilities are purely because of steroids, you must remember that your theory was disproved the year following his 73 home runs. That was the year the man won a batting title, at age 38, with a .370 average.

I guess anyone that takes steroids must be able to hit .370. I am sure if that was the case then the league would be rampant with steroid abuse, and everyone would be hitting .370.

That is not the case.

It wasn't just the fact that he was able to hit .370 that disproves the steroid theory. Have any of you who have watched Bonds play the game, seen the shift the defense employs against him when he is batting? Bonds is a pull hitter, and the defensive shift pulls everyone to the right side of the field where Bonds supposedly should hit the ball. Yet, in winning the batting title, Barry learned to use the whole field, and even pull baseballs into right field, yet the defense, even though there was eight of them playing on that side, still could not make the play because Bonds hits the ball so perfectly.

Everyone wants to find a way to sum up Superstars. With Michael Jordan, when he was younger, before his six championship rings, and he was scoring 37 points a game, everyone said Jordan was over-hyped, that he shot the ball too much. Yet, he evolved, and the rest was history.

With Sammy Sosa, after they found the cork in his bat, everyone wanted to say that he must have corked his bat for every one of his 500 and something homeruns. Yet, he came back after the incident, and almost went to the World Series.

Even in football, we had some Republican guy, who thought he knew about sports, try to explain the Donovan McNabb phenomena, by stating, something along the lines of, McNabb might not be as good as we all thought, but everyone wants him to succeed, because the general public wants a good black quarterback. Then, after being humiliated in the press, and despite his slow start, McNabb came back and led his team to eight straight wins, and, if his receivers had done their jobs, he would have gone to the Super Bowl. In your face, Rush.

Anyway, the point is that most of the public does not understand HOW these players do what they do. They try to look for exterior factors, such as magic drugs, tiny cork in bats, and race issues, instead of looking at the glaring obvious fact: These players are Superstars because they work hard.

These players bust their butts, just like someone in a Fortune 500 company works hard to create innovative products.

The reason why we call these players, that we pay 30 dollars or more a ticket to watch perform, superstars, is because they evolve. They adapt. They are always changing their game as the game changes, so that they can continue to be the best.

If someone does not evolve as the game evolves, then the star loses his super status and fades into the darkness of mediocrity.

If a player cannot change his game, he becomes a Greg Vaughn, a Pete Incaviglia, a Bobby Bonilla, a Scottie Pippen, a Timmy Smith, an Andre Ware, or any quarterback the San Diego Chargers draft.

So for all you haters out there, think about what you say about Bonds before you say it, because the more idiotic, non-thought-out comments you say about the man, the more he's going to respond by smashing homeruns in your face, winning more MVP awards, more batting titles, and basically proving to everyone on the face of the earth, that no matter what, sticks and stones may in fact break people's bones, but names will never hurt him.

Anyone have any comments, questions -- email me at johnnydangerous@wowmail.com