Your attention please, ladies and gentlemen: Larry Beil has entered the arena.
Barry Bonds is retiring after this season … or he might play another five years. Barry's body is wracked with pain … or he feels great. So what's true here? With Bonds, the answer is all of the above.
I know what he means. But no, it is impossible that all of this is true. It can't be true that he's retiring after this season and he might play another five years.
It was classic Bonds this past week, with Barry fueling dueling headlines, supplying quotes about his imminent demise and his bright future.
I'm sorry -- fueling headlines? Bonds did that? I get that people hate Barry Bonds. I'm fine with that, even though I root for the guy. I don't care that he did steroids, I don't even really care that he's pretty clearly kind of a dick. That's just me. What I don't get is how people who hate Bonds can accuse him of "headline fueling," when they're the ones writing the stories. You did this, Larry Biel; you wrote the headline on the Yahoo! sports homepage. You're saying he's fueling headlines because, over the course of the week, he was sort of duplicitous? And now you're going to write an article which is promoted on the Yahoo! MLB front page as "an exercise in futility"? I guess that's one way to go about things.
Major League Baseball is trying to distance itself from the steroid era, so Bonds eclipsing 755 is not necessarily a good thing. But tying Aaron would be perfect. MLB would get the excitement of another chase at history and Aaron would still hold a share of the title. Bonds would get his glory. Those who love him can cheer and those who loathe him can boo what they'd view as a tainted record.
Larry, you genius! Here's a phone tree -- you start with Selig, get him and his cronies to be mum about the conspiracy. I'll start calling pitchers in the NL West, make sure they know the arrangement. Junior, Ken and Murbles will deal with Felipe Alou, Bob Costas and Hank Aaron. Since it's such a perfect plan, and as you noted, Bonds would get his glory, I doubt we even need to get in touch with Barry himself to let him know what's up. Seven fifty-five it is.
Well played, Beil! Your move, Mr. Kasparov.
