My thoughts…on stuff

Now let’s get this straight. I’m no baseball fan. I never collected baseball cards as a kid, I never held a baseball bat in my hand, and I can’t tell a curveball from a screwball. But despite this, I’ve been paying close attention to Barry Bonds and his quest to beat Babe Ruth’s record of 715 home runs, which he got a step closer to achieving on the weekend by hitting his 714th. Not because I’m a fan of the man (quite the contrary), but because of what he represents: dishonesty unpunished. Yeah I know, some of you Yanks will throw you Cracker Jacks and hot dogs at the monitor, but the vast majority will agree with me. Bonds’ career is an embarrassment to baseball. He sends the wrong message to people, that honesty is for the small, and cheating is okay if you are great.

I mean look around you. Almost every other day you hear of politicians being involved in corruption and CEOs being involved in fraud. Yet they only receive slaps on the wrist. What message is this sending to the younger generation? No wonder that in a study done at a prominent American college, more than half of the students said that cheating was OK. Now I’m no saint. I’m not taking a “holier than thou” approach on the issue. I’ve cheated before. But in my defense I only did it a handful of times, and only when I exhausted all other means to get the grade. Because of this walking disgrace, baseball has lost it’s integrity. Why won’t they punish him? Is it because he’s too valuable a player? Is it because he’s so close to the Hall Of Fame that they’ll just let him slide? Or is it because steroid use is so rampant in baseball that if Bonds goes down, others will too? Whatever the reason, he must be penalized, or baseball will never regain its purity, and Babe Ruth and the other baseball greats will roll in their graves in shame.