All the kids looking up to me can suck my (expletive)

I was at a Pirates/Diamondbacks game in August of 2001, when Luis Gonzalez was barely keeping up with Barry Bonds in his chase for the home run record, and before the game there must have been at least a dozen fans yelling to Gonzalez, "Please, Luis, beat Barry!"

Barry Bonds has been hated for a long time, but this story goes beyond the pale. Death threats, extortion, numerous affairs, tax evasion... And all of that is completely separate from the fact that he has been doping, heavily, for that matter, since Mark McGwire injected his way into the record books in 1998.

If Barry had retired after that season with an injury, he would have been a hall of famer. 411 homeruns, 445 stolen bases, 1216 RBI's, 7 gold gloves, three MVP awards. So what was it? A need to silence the critics who have been curiously following for his whole career? A chance to finally fully get out of the shadow of his father? A chance to get out of the shadow of Willie Mays? Or just plain sociopathy?

Such a depressing day. Two genuine heroes, Kirby Puckett and Dana Reeve, die, and now more and more of these layers of Bonds start to get peeled away, and its just so awful. The baseball purist in me disagrees, but maybe Bonds' 71 shouldn't just have an asterisk, but it should be erased altogether. Call the Maris family.