Chasing Barry

Interestingly, three days earlier, Dave Callaway, writing for MarketWatch also compared Bonds to Lay, the former CEO of Enron; however, he believes both have been scapegoated by the media. "Bonds has become this sporting generation's sacrificial lamb," he wrote. "He has been labeled the world's biggest cheater for, at worst, doing what pretty much everybody else was doing, something that was not illegal. His treatment by various columnists ... has been appalling, and generally based on the perception that he's a jerk. Well, he may be. And that puts him in fine standing with other baseball immortals and well-known prats like Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio and Ty Cobb." Lay and Bonds, Callaway concluded, "are being made scapegoats for a disaster that was none of their individual doing."

So if Bonds has never been busted for steroids — despite the allegations put forth in Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams' extremely damaging exposé Game of Shadows — why is he being so brutally tarred and feathered?

The Race Card

Other members of the sports media — though not many in print — have suggested that Bonds is getting a raw deal because he's black, pursuing a record held by a legendary white player. On May 19, Black Athlete Sports Network's Joe Booker wrote: "It is not about steroids. It is about chasing Ruth. Those who don't think racism plays a role in the hate that Bonds receives are in denial. When blacks bring racism to the forefront, racists call it 'playing the race card.'"

Lupica sees things differently. On April 9, in his "Shooting from the Lip" column, he opined: "If it's really racism that has people all worked up about Barry Bonds ... [h]ow come nobody got worked up this week when Ken Griffey, Jr. passed Mickey Mantle on the home run list? ... The subject with Bonds is drugs, no matter how desperate some people are to make it about something else."

Dave Zirin, whose syndicated "Edge of Sports" column is occasionally picked up by TheNation.com, wrote on April 1: "Is Barry Bonds the object of a racist witch-hunt? The fact is that racism smears this entire story like rancid cream cheese on a stale bialy." Zirin wrote on May 8: "[Ruth] made his bones playing against only a select segment of the population because of the ban on players whose skin color ran brown to black."

'Shoot From the Lip and Not Show Up'

Whether it's because of race or 'roids, clearly few in the press box believe him much less like him, which arguably makes objectivity in covering Bonds impossible. "It's difficult," says Mike Fine of Boston's Patriot Ledger. "How do you treat someone fairly when he's obviously been cheating?"

Says Booker: "Once you get to know Barry and he trusts you, you will find out that he is not such a bad guy. He has been burnt so many times by the media. I don't like the way he treats the media, but it is not a reason to hate him."

Bloom, one of the few journalists to earn Bonds' trust while writing for The San Diego Union Tribune in the '80s and '90s, thinks that it's all too easy for reporters to kill Bonds from afar. "My biggest beef with all of this is that most of the nastiest stuff comes from reporters who have never met or interviewed Bonds and are taking their shots from a distance," says Bloom. "Though I like Lupica personally and respect him as a columnist, I haven't seen him in a Giants clubhouse since Bonds got close to 700 almost two years ago. That's easy stuff: to shoot from the lip and not show up."

Steve Bloom is the former editor of High Times and currently the magazine's editor-at-large. He is the author Watch Out for the Little Guys, a book about basketball. He blogs at Blooming Ideas.