Written by Terence Moore at Sports On Earth.com
Ever since Barry Bonds joined the Major Leagues in 1986, we’ve had riveting conversations, and they’ve lasted awhile. Around me, he’s straightforward without the hint of spin. He’s cerebral, engaging and respectful. He’s always seconds away from one of the greatest smiles you’ll ever see.
That’s why this was just more of the same the other day when Bonds and I huddled about something that has bothered me regarding baseball’s career home run leader as the years have become decades.
His image is all wrong.
Yes, Bonds was surly, angry, dismissive, grumpy, rude, obnoxious, nasty, selfish, ungrateful and combative toward many people during his 22 seasons through 2007 with the Pittsburgh Pirates and the San Francisco Giants. But given my interactions with him, that wasn’t the real guy, and guess who was responsible for such a misconception?
“Me. It’s on me. I’m to blame for the way I was [portrayed], because I was a dumbass. I was straight stupid, and I’ll be the first to admit it,” said Bonds, nodding in the visitors’ dugout at Turner Field last week, when he was in Atlanta during his first year as the hitting coach for the Miami Marlins. “I mean, I was just flat-out dumb. What can I say? I’m not going to try to justify the way I acted toward people. I was stupid. It wasn’t an image that I invented on purpose. It actually escalated into that, and then I maintained it. You know what I mean? It was never something that I really ever wanted. No one wants to be treated like that, because I was considered to be a terrible person. You’d have to be insane to want to be treated like that. That makes no sense.
“Hell, I kick myself now, because I’m getting great press [since being more cooperative], and I could have had a trillion more endorsements, but that wasn’t my driving force. The problem was, when I tried to give in a little bit, it never got better. I knew I was in the midst of that image, and I determined at that point that I was never going to get out of it.
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