Jack-Asterisk

Barry Bonds is back in the news again for his mouth rather than his home run swing. It seems that Mr. Bonds has taken more than a little offense to the fan-voted asterisking of his 756 ball, one that will likely end up in the Hall of Fame. You can't blame him for being irked, but as always, it's how he responds to the affronts that continues to make him sports' most unlikable megastar. Observe.

The clown who bought the historic home run ball took a poll (not the way they do at the Wheelhouse) and determined that the voice of the people indicated that he should put a large asterisk on the ball before donating it to Cooperstown. Even if you hate Barry, and I assume by the fact that you have functional organs that might one day be labeled "heart" and "brain" by a coroner that you do hate Barry, you have to admit that this is fairly harsh. Not entirely unjust, but harsh. Here is how a sensible veteran of the game for 20+ years should respond:

"It's extremely disappointing. I'm well aware of the public sentiment regarding my feat, but this epitomizes my situation -- it always feels like a singular, personal attack when there is speculation, even accusations that encompass the entire league. I accept that as one of the league's premier stars, I'm going to be more of a target than many, but permanently defacing a small piece of baseball's glorious history before final judgment has been passed on me and everyone else in this game is an irreversible act of guilty until proven innocent. In many ways, I've brought some scorn on myself through the years, but even I can be hurt by what I see as piling on. I'm hopeful Mr. Ecko will abandon this lynch mob verdict and preserve the original dignity of the generous act of donating the ball to the esteemed halls of Cooperstown."

If he'd gone that route, he'd win back a few on the fence, and even those who despise him the most would have to concede it was a well-reasoned reply. Instead, as we've been shown, steroids and HGH do not inflate the intelligence quotient, and here's the article [edited with Gheorghe's commentary] about how Barry the Wiser chose to respond:

NEW YORK-- Barry Bonds would boycott Cooperstown if the Hall of Fame displays his record-breaking home run ball with an asterisk. That includes skipping his potential induction ceremony.

"I won't go. I won't be part of it," Bonds said in an interview that aired Thursday night. "You can call me, but I won't be there." [So far, his response is understandable. If only he'd stop here, or elucidate calmly as to how much this would hurt him personally.]

The ball Bonds hit for home run No. 756 this season will be branded with an asterisk and sent to the Hall. Fashion designer Marc "The Bunnyman" Ecko bought the ball in an online auction and set up a Web site for fans to vote on its fate. In late September, he announced fans voted to send the ball to Cooperstown with an asterisk.

Bonds has called Ecko "an idiot." [Endearing him that much more to the guy who owns the ball. Well played, sir.]

"I don't think you can put an asterisk in the game of baseball, and I don't think that the Hall of Fame can accept an asterisk," Bonds said. "You cannot give people the freedom, the right to alter history. You can't do it." [This is, without a doubt, my favorite line, so I'll repeat: "You cannot give people the freedom, the right to alter history." Where do you think you are, America??? Sounds like something the commander-in-chief might've stumbled into.]

"There's no such thing as an asterisk in baseball." [Yet. There weren't anti-steroid rules in baseball a decade ago, either.]

So, if the Hall goes through with the asterisk display?

"I will never be in the Hall of Fame. Never," Bonds said. "Barry Bonds will not be there. [Finally, we're starting to see eye to eye. Oh, wait.]

Giants general manager Brian "Homo" Sabean reiterated Thursday that the team won't bring back Bonds next season. The seven-time NL MVP, who has spent 15 of his 22 major league seasons in San Francisco, was asked whether he will retire as a Giant.

"Yeah, it's my house. No matter what that's my house, no one's going to take that away, no one ever," Bonds answered. "No one's going to take the love of that city of me away, ever." [They like me. They really like me.]

Bonds, who has 762 homers, broke Aaron's record with a shot into the right-center seats off Washington Nationals pitcher Mike "Make Explosion Noises Here" Bacsik at San Francisco on Aug. 7. Matt "Guitar" Murphy, a 21-year-old student and construction supervisor from New York, emerged from a scuffle holding the ball. He said he decided to sell it because he couldn't afford to pay the taxes required to keep it.

Bonds told MSNBC he hoped to reach 764 homers because he was born in July 1964. [That . . . makes sense . . . to somebody, I'm sure.] He said he's been working out and still is considering whether to play next season.

"I may hit two home runs so I can go home. I just think that I have a lot of game left. I think that I can help a team with a championship," Bonds said. "I'm a hell of a part-time player, too." [Except, of course, if your team is not actually in the market for a clubhouse distraction, a payroll destroyer, a guy who spells it "teim," and a guy who "may hit two home runs so I can go home." The guy is unbelievable.]

Bonds said he won't talk to George Mitchell's staff looking into steroids use in baseball while he is under investigation in the BALCO case. A grand jury has been investigating whether Bonds committed perjury when he testified he never knowingly took performance-enhancing drugs.

"I know it ends in January, so a couple more months. But I haven't been keeping up with it. Not at all," Bonds said. [I'm betting Greg Anderson has.] "I have nothing to hide. I have said that before and I will say it now and I will look you in the face. [Reporters scurry for lightning cover.] I have nothing to hide, nothing. So look all you want to." [Thanks, big guy. This isn't an unwarranted police search, they don't need your permission.]

The dude is never, ever, ever going to comprehend that a good chunk of life is less about what exactly we do and more about how we do it. Easy for me to say, I'm not hounded by a-hole reporters who will benefit by my undoing, but there's got to be an easier way for him. I'm trying to teach my children about the Golden Rule, and Barry is going to be Exhibit B (the painting of Confucius and the Dalai Lama having a chugging contest is Exhibit A). His disdain for everyone but himself is stupefying.

I've always been against the asterisking of any records in MLB's good book, if only because you could pretty much asterisk 3/4 of the whole account if you wanted to make it truly fair. Dead Ball Era batsmen must roll over in their dugouts when they hear talk of special exceptions because of steroids. The game has gone through many more changes over the years than just the advent of performance-enhancing drugs, which is why excessive hoop-la over the topping of virtually any record these days is inevitably an overblown, underthought, media- and money-driven waste. Baseball can't even level out its current playing field among small and large market teams. You think its record book spanning over 135 years is fair?

But you know . . . with every move Barry Bonds makes, with every surly, snide snipe from the guy, I rather do hope they brand that damn thing with an asterisk just as they finally let Mark McGwire into the Hall. And it's not because he's the only steroid abuser, not even close. And it's not because he's the best player of the tainted era. And it's definitely not because he's black. (Though racists unfortunately permeate every aspect of our world, Bonds' posturing as the victim of racism lost credence once Henry Aaron started to receive overdue praise from the baseball world during Barry's stretch run.)

No, the reason I'm suddenly siding with the hack writers who can't ink a piece on Barry Bonds without excessive uses of Shift-8 is that one of the few principles I devoutly believe in is the concept of karma. Barry got by for a while on his God-given talent while looking down his nose at the world. When he was upstaged, he stacked the deck and ascended the mountaintop, Rosie Ruiz-style. And all the while he has the gall/audacity/brass balls/lack of anything discernible as a soul to lie to the world with every step, his smirk ever-widening with each accolade. The Senate, the sporting world, and especially the fans have wanted to smack that smug look off Bonds' face by watching him go to jail and have his numbers stricken from the record -- and yet, up to now, he's had the last laugh on every last one of us.

Chances are he'll never have to own up to his mistakes, he'll get into the Hall of Fame, and what's remembered of him a generation or two later will, like Ty Cobb's legacy, fall back mostly on the numbers. But just as a random movie quote now pops into my head when I think of the former ("Ty Cobb wanted to play, but none of us could stand the son-of-a-bitch when we were alive, so we told him to stick it!"), here's hoping that one oddly marred baseball in some future exhibit in Cooperstown will stand for generations to come as a tiny, 108-stitched window into Barry Bonds the Human above and beyond Barry Bonds the Baseball Player. And that possibility may be why, for the first time, there's a worried look in the otherwise arrogantly confident and condescending eyes of the former Giant.