HW #1, Due Monday, October 6th!

For Monday,read the Bonds Vs Giambi article. What is the opinion given in this column? What is your opinion of the subject? Respond in 5-7 sentences.

See you in class!

-Mr. Donohue

Cheers for Giambi, but Silence for Bonds

By WILLIAM C. RHODEN

Barry Bonds must be kicking himself.

As he watches Jason Giambi morph from pariah to hero, being feted with mustache day at Yankee Stadium in support of a failed All-Star candidacy, Bonds has to be thinking, “You mean, all I had to do was say I did it.”

All Bonds had to do, it seems, was throw himself at the mercy of Commissioner Bud Selig, confess to George J. Mitchell and admit to the national news media, as Giambi did, that he should not have “messed with that stuff.”

Giambi on at least three occasions all but admitted he cheated, that he used performance-enhancing drugs to get an edge. That admission, coupled with cultivated personal charm, has been enough to earn Giambi — a mediocre power hitter — a Major League Baseball pass.

While Giambi has become a media darling, Bonds, the greatest home run hitter of our time, can’t get a job.

Why, with so many major league teams desperate for help, is Bonds being boycotted?

The pat answer is the so-called baggage Bonds might bring.

News media baggage is what is weighing him down. And let’s dispense with the “Little Timmy needs a role model” guff.

Role model?

Why were the Yankees passing out Giambi mustaches — to adults and children — in honor of an admitted drug cheat? So fans could stuff the ballot and get Giambi on the All-Star team. What’s the message here? That you can do wrong and make it right — after you’re busted — by groveling, granting media access, begging for mercy by playing ball with the powers that be? Then you, too, can get back.

Thanks to the Mitchell report, the public now knows that scores of players were using performance-enhancing drugs. Giambi was frequently mentioned in the report.

How does Bonds get back in baseball? How do we end the owners’ apparent unholy conspiracy to keep Bonds out of uniform?

Which team will have the courage to step up to the plate?

In 2004, Bonds told reporters that he could see himself ending his career in the American League as a designated hitter.

The time has come. Bonds belongs in the American League; he belongs in Boston.
Boston has a great legacy of hitters: Ted Williams, Carl Yastrzemski, Jim Rice, David Ortiz. Bonds is the greatest of them all.

This makes sense for Boston in light of Ortiz’s wrist injury, which could prevent him from being a power hitter for the rest of the season.

Imagine the impact Bonds’s presence will have on the already-volatile Yankees-Red Sox rivalry. Imagine the force he could be in the Red Sox’ push for a second consecutive championship. Bonds’s agent, Jeff Borris, said his client would need just 10 days to prepare.

Bonds in Boston sounds preposterous — at first.

Four years ago, Bonds made some unflattering remarks about the city.

At the time, he could not see himself in Boston.

“Boston is too racist for me,” he told The Boston Globe. “I couldn’t play there.”
But that was in 2004. Massachusetts has an African-American governor. Boston, thanks to the Celtics — Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and Paul Pierce — made a significant transformation in perception. The Celtics, and by extension Boston, are seen as hip and cool and soulful.

Critics say Bonds is over the hill as a hitter, but the reality is that he is still the most feared slugger of any era. No one has been walked intentionally as often as Bonds; Bonds has broken Williams’s record for on-base percentage and Babe Ruth’s record for slugging percentage.

Yet Bonds can’t get a job, while Giambi has a day.

“I can’t believe he doesn’t have a job,” Borris told USA Today recently. “No one has offered even the minimum salary. He made the All-Star team last year, and there’s no reason to believe he wouldn’t have a repeat performance in 2008, except for the conspiracy against him.”

Why is Bonds having such a hard time re-entering? The common response is Bonds’s federal indictment and pending trial in March on perjury and obstruction of justice charges.

But the resistance to Bonds goes beyond suspected steroid use. What still rubs the news media the wrong way is Bonds’s “attitude,” that multi-layered word with an assortment of connotations. Bonds has to do a complete media makeover, and he’s fully capable: smiles, charm, gratitude and home runs. Lots of home runs.

In no time, he’ll have a mustache day of his own.