Permit a baseball outsider's perspective on Barry's chase for the home run record.  I am a casual baseball fan.  A consistent viewer of sports television, I have seen much more commentary on the state of baseball than actual baseball gameplay.  Peter Gammons, Harold Reynolds, et al tell me more or less what I want to know:  who's winning, which players are doing well, which teams/players are surprises/disappointments.  The only other thing I care at all about is records getting broken.  Which is why I like Barry Bonds.

I find the response to his pursuit of the home record troubling.  Despite what Stephen A. and Scoop might say, race probably is not the driving force behind the anti-Bonds vitriol.  Sports media members typically hate Bonds for two reasons: he violated the "sanctity of the game" by allegedly cheating and he's a jerk.

Sports media judging athletes on a moral basis is at best comical.  Michael Jordan is worshipped - Michael Jordan the philanderer, gambling addict, and hypercritical teammate.  Jordan slammed his teammates at every opportunity and even ran his coach off.  Ray Lewis was involved in murder.  Jason Kidd slapped his wife around.  ESPN employee Michael Irvin was involved in the use and trafficking of illegal drugs.  Ty Cobb, by all accounts, was a terrible human being.  Bobby Jones was a racist.  Even the great Babe Ruth, whose legacy so many fear will be tarnished if evil Bonds is not subdued, was a drunken womanizer.  Why is Bonds hammered when no definitive proof has been brought forth (remember innocent before proven guilty?) and Jason Giambi admits to steroid use and skates?  Nobody is calling for Giambi's 2000 AL MVP award to be revoked, but all of Bonds's records are up for recall.  Ruth's records are not considered illegitimate because he never played against African-American players.  If Bonds actually did steroids, it wasn't against the rules when he did.  On what basis would you erase his records?

As for the "sanctity of the game," sports media types live in a delusional world.  The vast majority of society, even ardent sports fans, just enjoy the game without ascribing any holiness to it.  Most of us above the age of 12 don't live under any illusions that athletes are anything but guys like the rest of us who have great athletic gifts.  It was the sports media who told us after the terrorist attacks of September 11th that thousands of people losing their lives "puts sports in perspective" and reminded us that things like family, religion, and the pursuit of happiness are more important than grown men playing with balls.  Do you know anybody who really needed thousands slaughtered to remember that raising a good family is more significant than watching the Knicks or Padres?

It seems that all of the anti-Bonds rhetoric stems from sports media getting their feelings hurt.  Perhaps they feel personally betrayed that Bonds cheated them, that Bonds betrayed the sanctity of the game where grown men run around and hit balls.  If you don't want to rescind the records of drunks, wife beaters, murderers, drug dealers, and thieves, why rail against the record pursuit of a player who didn't even break his sport's existing rules?  The answers to that question lie somewhere in the areas of hypocrisy and overindulgence in a pasttime.