Like it or not, this is one of the saddest eras in baseball history. It’s not the Black Sox scandal of a hundred years ago. It’s not the more recent steroids era. It’s not Pete Rose and gambling. But it’s major league baseball players, the best players in the land, cheating by concocting a scheme to steal pitchers’ signs illegally, using electronic means.
I mean these players, these professional players, these major league players, learned when they were in high school or college how to distinguish a fastball from a curveball. But now that they are professionals they need electronic assistance?
What would Barry Bonds have done with this system? No ballpark in America would have been safe from his assault.
The Bonds era, however, was sad and depressing enough without linking it to another shady era of cheating.
What, you don’t think Bonds cheated because he was never caught? He was caught, all right; he just lied his way out of it. Yes, Bonds was a double duty skunk. He lied and he cheated. He used steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs and claimed he was using flaxseed oil.
With his lying and cheating, though, Bonds has moved into position to be elected to the Hall of Fame. That stunning development could occur this year, this week in fact.
With three years of ballot eligibility remaining, Bonds last year received 59.1 percent of the writers vote, his best percentage in seven years of his candidacy.
According to Ryan Thibodaux’s Hall of Fame tracker, as of Saturday, Bonds had …
