I Get Like This Each Spring

I don't know what to make of all this Barry Bonds stuff. I feel a genuine conflict and I'm trying to be fair through all of it.

In all things judicial, I believe in the presumption of innocence. But once guilt has been unequivocally determined, I also believe in swift and proportional punishment.

I know of no drug test Barry Bonds has ever failed. Not only have I never been in his presence while he was taking steroids, I've never even been in his presence.

However, I can reasonably be assured that he has at some recent point in his career taken illegal performance-enhancing drugs. But I don't know know.

One thing I do know for sure - he's never been caught with a corked bat. What's up, Sosa?

Over the past couple of weeks, there have been too many articles debating whether Barry Bonds is a better ball player than Babe Ruth.

My thoughts:

Baseball, above everything else, is a game of statistics. And the numbers just don't support that claim. Sorry, Barry.

Not only do numbers not lie, neither does the convergence of history and legend. Where Ruth will always be tops is in the distance between himself and the next best player. Heck, there were seasons where Ruth hit more homeruns that other teams combined.

Still, when Bonds hits 715, I think, in all fairness, he, under the presumption of innocence, deserves to be asterisk free in the record books and inducted into the Hall on his first ballot.

That being said, so much as a jay-walking ticket, and like Sethi says in The Ten Commandments, "Let the name of Barry Bonds be stricken from every book and tablet. Stricken from every pylon and obelisk of Baseball. Let the name of Barry Bonds be unheard and unspoken, erased from the memory of man, for all time."

And I don't even think Ruth is the best player of all time. I'd still gotta with the Dage or Say Hey.

Man, I love this game.