[News] The Scourging of Barry Bonds

[Anti-Imperialist News]

http://www.counterpunch.org/zirin07202007.html

July 20, 2007


The Scourging of Barry Bonds


White Noise and the Black Athlete

By DAVE ZIRIN

"Throw at his head! Throw at his head!"

The egg-shaped man in Milwaukee's Miller Park, who looked like he 
would be sitting behind a desk by morning, continued the arrhythmic 
chant as those around him chimed in. They were all pleading to see a 
95-mph fastball hit a man in the temple, and felt that their demand 
was righteous.

The player they wanted to see put down was, of course, San Francisco 
Giants baseball star Barry Bonds, and it is hard to say what was more 
shocking: the call for his beheading or the near-collective rapture 
at the thought.

One guy yelled, "Hit his knee! End his career! Please! I will name my 
kid after you!" A friend of mine who was attending this game and 
relayed this story almost got into fisticuffs for the crime of 
wearing a Giants cap.

This may have happened in Milwaukee, but it's not the story of one 
city and one set of fans. It's a continual happenstance in almost 
every baseball stadium not named AT&T Park. As Bonds marches 
undeterred toward that 756th homer, and the title of all-time home 
run king, the volume on the vitriol is being raised to disturbing heights.

Some say they can't stand Bonds because they are beyond certain--even 
in the absence of a positive drug test--that he has used steroids. 
Others say it's his "surly attitude" or "bad sportsmanship."

Of course, legions of athletes have been suspected of using 
performance enhancers. And if you want to find a "surly athlete," 
well, just visit your nearest locker room.

But Bonds has become a peculiar kind of lightning rod, the weight of 
an entire statistically dubious era resting on his shoulders. And 
much of the reaction--much of the "white noise" that follows him from 
park to park--has the feel of something uglier than the typical, 
something akin to racism.

* * *

THERE IS a stubborn insistence that this is utter nonsense--as if our 
dual national obsessions (racism and sports) somehow live in 
isolation from one another. The anti-Bonds furies speak with the 
self-righteousness of a bizarre social movement, and claim to be 
unsullied by the lowbrow emotions of bigotry.

My argument is not that everyone who is against Bonds is a racist, or 
that anyone who believes in harsh penalties for steroid use is 
bigoted. A person can hate Bonds and spend weekends performing in a 
James Brown cover band, with all proceeds going to the United Negro 
College Fund.

But those who wish harm on the man--who cheer at the thought of a 
grisly, career-ending injury--should ask themselves what is driving 
the seething rage that accompanies far too many of the boos.

I was on a talk show recently where I raised the issue that racism 
remains a factor in the Bonds brouhaha. The response took me off 
guard--I was asked whether I had ever measured the man's head.

Please ponder the question for a moment. I was asked whether I had 
physically taken a tape measure and wrapped it around Barry Bonds' 
head. When I assured the host that I was neither Bonds' personal 
haberdasher, nor someone who approached athletes with tape measures, 
he grew belligerent: "His head! His head! Why won't you talk about 
measuring his head? It's the proof he's used steroids! The size of 
his head is the smoking gun!"

It was hard to tell whether this was sports radio or an insane 
asylum. Admittedly, the difference is often slender, but the quickest 
way to send a member of the Get Barry Brigade over the edge is to 
raise the specter of bigotry.

There is a useful historical comparison to Bonds in Jack Johnson, the 
first African American heavyweight boxing champion. Like Bonds, 
Johnson was a dominator of his chosen profession, a person whose 
skills threatened to master and even overwhelm the sport.

Like Bonds, Johnson was not a political person, but became a figure 
of enormous political symbolism. Like Bonds, Johnson never tired of 
telling those who doubted him that there was a certain part of his 
anatomy they could smooch. Like Bonds, Johnson faced a divide in 
perceptions, with much of white America wanting him vanquished and 
much of Black America wanting him to get his due.

Consider an ESPN/ABC News poll released in May. Black fans are more 
than twice as likely as their white counterparts to want Bonds to 
break Hank Aaron's record of 755 homers (74 percent versus 28 
percent), and nearly twice as likely to think that the slugger has 
been treated unfairly (46 percent versus 25 percent). And the 
press--still stubbornly white--holds Bonds, like Johnson, to a 
standard far different than his non-Black contemporaries.

The towering African American intellectual W.E.B. DuBois attempted to 
analyze exactly why Johnson was the repository for so much revulsion. 
His words have an almost humbling contemporary echo: "Why then this 
thrill of national disgust? Because Johnson is Black.

"Of course, some pretend to object to Mr. Johnson's character. But we 
have yet to hear, in the case of white America, that marital troubles 
have disqualified prizefighters or ballplayers or even statesmen. It 
comes down, then, after all, to this unforgivable Blackness."

The question we need to pose is why so much anger, so much visceral, 
throbbing fury, is directed at Barry Bonds--and why do we in the 
bleachers or at the bar so casually accept it? If we ask the 
question, we will begin to get at some less-than-comfortable answers.

Dave Zirin is the author of 
"<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1846011558/counterpunchmaga>The 
Muhammad Ali Handbook" (MQ Publications) and 
"<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1931859418/counterpunchmaga>Welcome 
to the Terrordome: The Pain, Politics and Promise of Sports" . You 
can receive his column Edge of Sports, every week by e-mailing 
<http://www.edgeofsports-subscribe@zirin.com/>edgeofsports-subscribe at zirin.com. 
Contact him at <mailto:edgeofsports at gmail.com>edgeofsports at gmail.com




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