Barry Bonds: Much ado about nothing

Now that the Barray Bonds has broken the homerun hitting record, maybe everyone can go back to their regular lives and stop talking about whether Bonds accomplished the record with the aid of steroids or not. We may never know the anser to that one, and quite frankly, I don't think it matters.

Let's suppose that Bonds indeed used performance-enhancing drugs. There is every reason to believe that he wouldn't be the only one to do so. That would include the many players who pitched to him and may have improved their performance through steroid use. Can anyone ever figure out what would have happened if they all had been clean?

Let's not forget that steroids aren't the only performance-enhancing drugs. Amphetamines--greenies--have been around for years, and if this article is accurate, used by a substantial number of players, including possibly Hank Aaron. Those lovely little green pills jazzed the user's stamina and enhanced his reaction time. In other words, anyone who wishes to diminish Bonds' homerun record better be ready to challenge many other records as well.

But, I'm not ready to congratulate Bonds either. I don't fault him, but I can't give him the figurative pat on the back. Rather, the most that can be said is that Major League Baseball has a serious PR problem. It waited far too long to determine whether there was a problem and then to decide how to address it. That's not Bonds' fault; it's not any of the players' fault. It is what it is. I'm not particularly a baseball fan, but play ball.