Mark McGwire's steroids cry means Barry Bonds stays silent

Mark McGwire shocked the Sports World Monday with his explanation that he did indeed take steroids and performance enhancing drugs through his career in Oakland and all the way to his record setting 1998 season when he broke the Single-Game Home Run Record. Mark McGwire issued this statement Monday:

“I remember trying steroids very briefly in the 1989/1990 off season and then after I was injured in 1993, I used steroids again. I used them on occasion throughout the ’90s, including during the 1998 season. I wish I had never touched steroids. It was foolish and it was a mistake. I truly apologize. Looking back, I wish I had never played during the steroid era.”

The statement turned Major League Baseball upside down, but don't look for former San Francisco Giants Slugger Barry Bonds to say he used steroids anytime soon. To do so, in Barry's mind, would mean that "the system" beat him.

 Barry Bonds wants to beat "the system" because he sees it as racist. This view, and he has some fair reason to assert this, has unfortunately backed him into a corner that he's going to remain in for the rest of his life.

For Barry Bonds to admit any use of steroids absent under immunity, which he should have been granted long ago, is to perjure himself and write his ticket to jail. Anyone who's foolish enough to say or write that Barry Bonds should say he used steroids knows this. Moreover, in Barry's mind, he's already said he didn't know what he was being given. Proving that he did know is next to impossible.

Meanwhile, Barry Bonds rests with the belief that had he been white and broke McGwire's record, there would not have been the tremendous scrutiny placed on him. As one of my blogger friends Hodaka Kajita wrote in 2004, Barry Bonds was the target of sports reporters who "have hoarded Bonds in order to extract a comment that tarnishes his public image."

Of course, Hodaka's blog post caused a good debate, and that will continue today. But the bottom line is Barry Bonds felt he was the target of a racist witch hunt, author David Zirin believed this as well and expressed it in 2006, and I agree with both Bonds and Zirin.

Mark McGwire was given kid glove treatment in part because he's white and in part because he's a nice person. There's no argument here that some of Barry Bonds problems have been caused by the perception that he has an alleged legendary attitude, but even this is in question. Skip Bayless pointed to Sports Illustrated's Rick Reilly as the person who stsrted the torrent of "Bad Barry" columns and pres.

Bayless said this is so because San Francisco Giants' Jeff Kent, who didn't at all get along with Bonds at the time, was filling Reilly's notebook with negative Barry Bonds information and Reilly was soaking it up. Meanwhile, it was Jeff Kent who had the bad attitude according to Deadspin.

So all of that can be distilled to this: Barry Bonds is backed into a corner such that talking the way Mark McGuire did on Monday would give him a trip to the slammer for perjury and obstruction of justice.  Bonds has nothing to gain from "pulling a McGuire" and letting his enemies get the best of him.

Meanwhile, the real question is what did the Commissioner of Baseball know about this and when.  I personally don't believe he didn't know what was going on because too much money was at take not to.  All of this was in the middle of a home-run race that fueled the creation of a baseball stadium boom that gave us everything from Camden Yards in Baltimore to AT&T Park in San Francisco.  

AT&T Park is the house that Barry Bonds built.  I believe he knows it and so does MLB Commissioner Bud Selig.

Stay tuned.