Here's yet another hit, Barry Bonds

Let me begin by saying that I kind of wish it was Lance. Of course, Lance isn't embroiled in any doping controversy at the moment, and maybe I'm wrong - maybe Lance, like Marion Jones, is too far removed from the public clamor at this point to make the kind of impact that I am looking for in the whole worldwide doping debacle. And what is that impact, you ask? Well, in short, if the steroids-in-sports situation is World War II, right now I'm waiting for Pearl Harbor, and I'm afraid that, huge as it is, the Barry Bonds indictment feels a little more like the Soviet Invasion or the conquest of the Balkans. In other words, big news here in the ole U.S. of A., but not quite big enough to mobilize the Joint Chiefs, not time yet for "we have nothing to fear..."

So much for the military analogy. In plain language, I don't think Bonds resonates enough with people right now to make this the kind of soul-searching, era-defining moment that the steroids epidemic begs for. On that score, it's a shame he's such a dick, because if he provoked any sympathy at all in the public, his whole evil saga would have shocked the shit out of people. As it is, it's merely the whimper of an ending that we've known was coming all along. The helmet's off Darth, big whoop. He's dirtier than dirt, and we all made our peace with that a long time ago, home-run-king or not. That MLB ad that was running seven or eight times an hour all throughout the playoffs, the one with the jingle that still resonates faintly in my ears sometimes and tells me in no uncertain voice to go out into the street and start killing little children and small fluffy animals... that ad carried a not terribly subtle message about Bonds and the home-run record and the state of the national pastime. It began with a child putting a Hank Aaron baseball card up on a ledge and staring at it with all the wonder that his CGI-enhanced eyes could summon. And we all know what the wonder of a child means in the visual vernacular of television. THIS is the real and true legacy of baseball. This is the innocent integrity of our game. For MLB to choose that ad and that image to run incessantly during the postseason while behind the scenes rumors of the Bonds indictment were legion... it was no accident, no indeed.

So who, I wonder, WHO is it that's going to test positive for steroids and by the mere shock of the revelation prompt a paradigm shift? Michael Phelps, right before he wins his eighth gold medal in Beijing? Peyton Manning, right after the Super Bowl? Katie Couric? Oprah? It's hard for me to imagine at this point. Marion Jones came about seven years too late, and the overwhelmingly underwhelming response proves only how short the American attention span is when it comes to track and field and the Olympics. And as I said, the time when a big Lance revelation might have rocked the nation is probably long past as well. In the end, I just don't know who it could be, other than the fact that it ain't Bonds. But I guess that's the way it should be. The knockout punch is almost always the one you don't see coming. Plus, if we'd known the Japanese were going to bomb Pearl Harbor, we would have done something about it, right? Right?