Freedom Socialist • Vol. 28, No. 5 • October-November 2007

SPORTS

The anti-Barry Bonds slugfest

by Steven Strauss

He’s been called “the best player of his generation.” And this past summer, superstar Barry Bonds of the San Francisco Giants became baseball’s all-time home run leader.

One might have expected the sports pages of the big business press to celebrate this magnificent achievement. Instead, however, “bashing Barry Bonds” has become America’s new national pastime, as one sportswriter put it.

Just what did Bonds do to deserve this treatment?

Too much speaking up about racism. Underlying the media onslaught is Bonds’ long history of disobeying major league baseball’s cardinal rule: Don’t embarrass the owners or the big business press.

In capitalist America, crossing this line is grounds for a journalistic lynching.

Back in 1991, Bonds accused Pittsburgh Pirates owners of racial discrimination during salary negotiations with African American players. He charged them with trying to find a “great white hope.”

Boldly maintaining an anti-racist stance throughout his career, Bonds unapologetically calls it the way he sees it. ”Boston is too racist for me. I couldn’t play there,” he told one reporter. As radical sportswriter David Zirin has observed, comments like these antagonize even a liberal press.

For such crimes, ESPN gave Bonds its “Just Shut Up” award.

Nobody ever forced Bonds to publicly complain about racism. He could have quietly taken his voluptuous paycheck to the bank and gone on with his work, without disturbing anybody in power.

But that’s not what Barry Bonds is all about. In his very athletic body lies a very principled political bone.

Bonds’ stubborn refusal to let racism adversely affect his income and the quality of his work is too threatening to the capitalist bosses. Imagine the masses of U.S. workers likewise acting fearlessly in their own self-interest! Employers would shiver in their Italian leather boots.

That’s why the bosses are compelled to undermine any sympathy the public may have for Bonds. To do this, they rely on their own designated hitters — the big business press.

For example, as steroid use among athletes became increasingly known, sportswriters discovered that Bonds has very big muscles. He must be injecting, they figured. So his records don’t count.

Except they couldn’t find any needles. And Bonds has never failed a drug test.

But suppose he has used steroids. That was not against baseball rules before 1994. And the players themselves conservatively estimate that at least 50 percent have used the stuff.

Bonds hardly stands out. The steroid issue is just a pretext for a media attack.

Moreover, the capitalist class has no fundamental problem with performance-enhancing drugs in principle. When the Pentagon pushes stimulants on fatigued Air Force pilots, the media remains obediently quiet.

Class dynamics of sports. Zirin characterizes professional athletes like Bonds as “sports workers.” True, their astronomical salaries set them apart from ordinary workers. Their fancy cars create the illusion that they are one with the bosses. But, unlike the bosses, players do not own for a living.

The odds against anyone becoming a major league baseball player are astronomically high, harder than one chance in a million! It is impossible for owners to keep a reserve army of unemployed sports workers with which to intimidate the top-tier pros. Minor leaguers, though good, are just not good enough to be strikebreakers.

Bonds of course understands this. His bargaining advantage comes from the irreplaceability of his immense talents and his determination not to let racism work against him.

If Bonds and his fellow athletes are superrich, it is only because their work makes the owners even richer. The New York Yankees are worth $1.2 billion and even the “small market” Kansas City Royals are worth over a quarter billion.

Yet, unlike the players, baseball team owners are utterly superfluous to the sport. At most, they ruin it, by manufacturing a livelier ball, for example, so more fans attend games to watch home runs fly. Their parasitism is amplified by a unique federal exemption from anti-trust laws. Only the current owners can decide who may enter the business. Even Bill Gates can’t start a new team without their permission.

When Baltimore Orioles fans complain that owner Peter Angelos should stop meddling and just let those he hired do their jobs, they are implicitly stating that private ownership of baseball teams is not necessary to the game. Nationalizing the sport under player and fan control would eliminate this unnecessary and obnoxious private ownership.

Neither Bonds nor the other players are likely to support this as long as they regard great wealth as the ultimate protection from the hardships of racist capitalist society. But worker-directed nationalization would offer all players, from high to low, the best protection possible under the current system. And it could be a good and important step toward the surest safeguard against economic insecurity of all: socialism.

The great sport of baseball will rise to new heights once society eliminates production for profit and instead seeks to satisfy people’s needs. Fans will be in awe of great athletes who once again play for the love of the game