FrancisPage

Roid Rage

I'm not sure if steroids or hemorrhoids drove Barry Bonds' angst at his back-to-practice press conference but I have to say this:

Barry, grow up.

It doesn't matter whether you juiced or not or how many home runs you hit. Your performance in front of the mic is pitiful -- something more fitting to the playground than the baseball diamond. Badmouthing the press like they don't have a right to pursue the truth smacks of arrogance.

BONDS: "We just need to go out there and do our jobs, just as you professionals do your job. All you guys lied. All of y'all and the story or whatever have lied. Should you have asterisk behind your name? All of you lied. All of you have said something wrong. All of you have dirt. All of you. When your closet's clean, then come clean somebody else's. But clean yours first, okay."

The old glass houses bit. Fair enough. But what you obviously miss, Barry, is that we've already cleaned house for our mistakes. Now it's your turn. But I guess I'm overly optimistic with wooers like these:

"Dodger Stadium is the best show I ever go to in all of my baseball. They say, "Barry sucks" louder than anybody out there. And you know what, you'll see me in left field going just like this, because you know what, you've got to have some serious talent to have 53,000 people saying you suck. And I'm proud of that."

"But now, don't turn it into a spectacle now just because you have the freedom to come into our office and snoop and make up stories if you choose to, because, you know, a lot of it's not true. I mean, baseball players, every baseball player I know of, and I've been around this game since I was a child, all care about this game, all love this game, all have had their own personal problems or non-personal problems. But for the most part, no one goes out there and wants to embarrass the game of baseball, no one wants to go out there and embarrass themselves. I don't want to go out there and embarrass myself in front of people."

"Are y'all going to be good people or are you all going to be who you are and make the game or sports what it is? It's become "Hard Copy" all day long. Are you guys jealous? Upset? Disappointed? What?"

"Every time there has been incident, it has been corrected and now that it's being corrected, I think we need to go forward, move forward, let it go. Y'all stop watching Red Foxx in rerun shows and let's go ahead and let the [drug testing] program work and allow us to do our job."

Certain people believe they outgrow media scrutiny when they pass a certain milestone. Sorry, pal, it doesn't work that way. And I really don't care how much you whine or complain about it. As long as you try to stick it on everybody else but yourself, you'll get treated like the classless heel you lived up to today.