The New York Times Strikes Out: Barry Bonds, Race, and Mr. Subliminal

Last Sunday's New York Times Magazine contained a long article on Barry Bonds by David Grann that was wonderful, if you knew nothing about baseball or Bonds.

Remember Kevin Nealon's Saturday Night Live character, "Mr. Subliminal"? Everything he said out loud was a lie, which he would betray with the contradiction he'd mutter in his next breath. And so it is, with the New York Times' Mr. Subliminal, David Grann. Grann claims he isn't writing a story about race, but for Grann, in sports, race isn't everything, race is the only thing.

I will give a sampling of Grann's lies, followed, in parentheses, by the mutterings the reader is supposed to subliminally pick up on.

Grann tells us that "A man had called a Houston television station and vowed to shoot him before he could break the record. Bonds thought it was because of his race, that he was being threatened the way they had once threatened Hank Aaron, but the caller insisted it was something else: like so many fans, he just hated him."

('Yeah, right. Racists have become more sophisticated, in coming up with non-racial rationalizations, but you can tell they're racists, because they always deny that they are racists.')

"When Bonds's contract expired at the end of his record-breaking season, not a single team reportedly expressed public interest in luring away the greatest player in the game."

('They're dirty, racist bastards, who will disrespect the greatest player in the game, based merely on the color of his skin. In baseball, nothing has changed since the days of Jackie Robinson being subjected to racial taunts.')

Why doesn't the reporter tell the truth? At the age of 37, Bonds wanted a five-year, guaranteed deal, when no team felt that at his advanced age, he was good for even four.

From 1968-1981, Barry Bonds' father, Bobby, was an immensely gifted but inconsistent player who had personal problems. Grann suggests the reporters who wrote, ''Bonds Charged With Drunk Driving'' and ''Bonds Confronts Rumors About Drugs, Drinking'' were making up or exaggerating Bobby's drinking, but then quotes him as saying that, ''What I was doing was probably no different than Mickey Mantle or a bunch of 'em."

Grann leaves out that Mantle, a classic, falling-down drunk, drank himself to death. And that Mantle, who played his entire career in New York and traveled by taxi, was never arrested for DUI.

"Although Bobby still continued to put up good numbers year after year, he never lived up to expectations. 'Anything I did that wasn't what Willie Mays did meant I never lived up to my potential,' Bobby once said. Yet there were whispers that Bobby's failure was not just the result of the pressure of having to play in the shadow of Mays."

Grann is patronizing the elder Bonds. For someone with Bobby Bonds' talent, "good numbers" aren't good enough. Besides, the elder Bonds didn't mind superstar treatment; he just couldn't stand the pressure to consistently produce like a superstar.

Grann overtly blames the change in baseball reporting on the game having become more clearly a business, with the first players' strike, in 1972, killing many romantic notions. Were he familiar with his subject, he would have known that reporting was revolutionized by the 1970 publication of the irreverent, hilarious book, Ball Four, by former Yankees pitcher Jim Bouton and sportswriter Leonard Schechter. In one passage, Bouton recalled a pinch-hit, game-winning home-run by a Mantle so hung-over he could barely see the ball.

Grann's debunks the romantic notion of the game as having "actually" been played not by country boys, but by "urban toughs." Cap Anson, "Home Run" Baker, Christy Mathewson, Ty Cobb, Shoeless Joe Jackson, et al., a bunch of city boys? Right. And as if Barry Bonds were a street kid!

('If they were honest about baseball's roots, they would embrace "urban" types.')

Grann: "In recent years, few players have been held up as representatives of the old ideal more than Jeff Kent, the Giants' slender, tightly coiled second-baseman, who in 2000 Kent [sic] beat out Bonds for the M.V.P. and is said to despise Bonds more than anyone in baseball."

('Kent is the Great White Hope. That's why they lionize him, at Bonds' expense.')

Jeff Kent, the representative of an ideal? When Kent played for the New York Mets during the mid-1990s, he was almost universally considered a selfish crybaby, who slammed down his batting helmet when he struck out.

At one point, Grann portrays Jeff Kent as an anti-gay bigot. A baseball player? Who'd'a thunk it? Grann is pandering to Times editors and reporters. In an oft-reported story, a Times staffer observed that at editorial meetings these days, three-quarters of the staffers and editors present are gay. (And if any of those gay Timespersons are baseball fans, they keep such proclivities locked securely in the closet.)

Grann also does a "Great White Hope" number on Mark McGwire, "who despite a reputation for arrogance and rudeness became known as the antidote to Bonds."

Not being able to recall McGwire's "reputation for arrogance and rudeness," I did a google search, and still couldn't come up with any incriminating material. I do know that in McGwire's later years, he worked hard to live up to his role as poster boy for the game, both on the field and off.

I think I know what is going on, when Grann attacks white players, while rationalizing away Barry (and Bobby) Bonds' shortcomings. It is a common practice among racist blacks today — civilians as well as writers and academics — to run down any prominent white, with or without reason, while defending to the death any prominent black under fire, no matter how strong the case against him is (e.g., O.J. Simpson). Similarly, there are whites in the media, education, and politics, who consider themselves the friends and protectors of blacks. These whites read and listen to the most outrageous black claims, but instead of giving the mass of strangers whom they claim to love a much-needed reality check, they ape blacks' prejudices. David Grann is one such enabler of racist, black, self-delusion.

While there are New York Times readers who will see through Grann's agitprop, they tend to be over 50 years old, their numbers dwindling by the day. The current, dumbed-down Sunday Magazine, edited by pc featherweight Adam Moss, is geared towards younger readers with a limited knowledge of ... anything.

Consider the level of baseball knowledge of David Grann and his editors: Grann refers to Bonds' Pittsburgh Pirates manager, Jim Leyland, as "Jim Leyland, the Pirates head coach," and argues that, "It didn't matter that, unlike many players, Bonds never actually held out for more money." "Head coaches" and "holdouts" are the stuff of the NFL. No student of the game would EVER make either mistake, and no editor competent to work on sports stories would let it pass.

(In case you're wondering how a guy who doesn't know a manager from a "head coach" gets assigned to write a baseball story for the New York Times Magazine, David Grann is the son of publishing executive Phyllis Grann. In a puff piece by Marion Maneker on Phyllis Grann that appeared in the January 21 New York magazine, Maneker described Grann, who built Putnam Books into a $100 million-per-year imprint, as "the undisputed queen of New York's book business." )

But then, Grann is an ideological warrior who doesn't let the facts get in the way of a good story. His opening rings so false, as to give baseball fans ear aches: "One night last fall Barry Bonds, the demon of America's pastime, caught a glimpse of his own redemption." Demon? Barry Bonds?

Grann emphasizes the business-like nature of today's baseball, to disguise his thinly-veiled belief, from the Harry Edwards school of racist, sports sociology, that it would demean black stars to entertain the (predominantly white) paying fans — even though Grann quotes a contradictory statement by Bonds, emphasizing that baseball is entertainment. ''It's entertainment. It will come back. A lot of companies go on strike. . . . And people still ride the bus.''

For Grann, Bonds is just 'keepin' it real.' Grann doesn't know where first base is. Those who do, understand fans' distaste at having the men whom they pay rub fans' noses in the dirt, and know that fans reacted so viscerally to the 1994-1995 strike, that it took five years, all manner of goodwill propaganda by owners and players, and the continued use of a juiced baseball, before attendance recovered to pre-strike levels.

Quoting Richard Ben Cramer, Grann speaks, in the context of Joe DiMaggio, of a "hero machine." And yet, baseball fans and writers recall that when DiMaggio demanded a pay raise, he was roundly booed by Yankee fans for weeks. Some hero machine. But Joe was white, so I guess that fact wouldn't fit Grann's storyline.

Grann sees himself as deconstructing baseball's "romanticized" past, in which players' foibles were kept from the public. In reality, fans had much more access to, and thus knowledge of players' personalities 50 years ago, than they do now. Brooklynites of a certain age recall riding the trolley car to Ebbets Field with the likes of Jackie Robinson and Duke Snider. During the mid-1990s, Bobby Bonilla, then playing for the Mets, made a ludicrous ad, in which he claimed to ride the subways. However, I've never encountered a professional athlete using public transportation. Reportedly, one player did ride the subways during his time with the Mets, during the late 1990s, but John Olerud would not fit Grann's profile. Olerud is white.

Grann calls Bonds, without qualification, "the most [sic] dominant player of the modern era." Willie who? Hank who? While Bonds is the dominant position player of his generation, I would not rank him above Mays and Aaron. For one thing, there is the "standing on the shoulders of giants" factor. Even under comparable conditions, a player must do more than slightly exceed the achievements of his forebears, before being considered their superior. Those who came earlier, were not competing with the future. And so, the Johnny-come-lately must shatter those achievements. The livelier ball notwithstanding, Babe Ruth was to all the sluggers who came before him, as Secretariat was to all the race horses that preceded him.

But conditions are not comparable. Mays and Aaron played initially without the dilution of quality caused by expansion (and only modest expansion later in their careers), hit in stadiums with deeper outfields (lots of long fly outs), had to contend with a larger strike zone, and hit against pitchers who stood on higher pitching mounds, and who threw balls that were not juiced. Last year, former Mets great Donn Clendennon vividly expressed the difference. Visiting Mets broadcaster, and Hall of Fame pitcher Tom Seaver, Clendennon spoke incredulously of "145-pound" players "jacking" the ball.

Had Willie Mays and Hank Aaron played under today's conditions, they each would have hit at least 100 additional home runs during their respective careers.

Grann feigns disbelief that Bonds' contemptuous treatment of sportswriters should result in their disliking him, and then suggests that the unwritten "rules" local sportswriters have developed for dealing with Bonds, are based in (racist?) fantasy.

"In contrast to Kent, there were unofficial rules, I was told by reporters, to get to Bonds. Don't talk to him when he is getting dressed. Don't talk to him just before or after batting practice. Don't talk to him when he is sitting in his chair. Don't talk to him when he is talking to the trainer or to his son."

But Grann broke the "rules," and got away with it. Bonds must have seen through to Grann's inner goodness, in contrast to the "racist" beat reporters whom Bonds forces to jump through hoops.

It doesn't occur to Grann that his easy access to Bonds might have derived from the institutional power of the New York Times, or that Bonds, who is a bright man, likely did a background check on the writer, and determined that he was a greenhorn when it came to sports, and painfully pc, so as to be at worst, harmless, and at best, useful.

Oddly enough, in the one clearly racial situation that Grann writes about, he shies away from its racial implications. He quotes Bonds as complaining of [white] sportswriters who disparage him in private, only to approach him in the clubhouse or on the field for a quote. Bonds brags that he has "spies" who tell him what the writers say in private.

So, there are sportswriters who act collegially with their peers in private, only to betray them to the athletes they cover. Bonds has no problem with such journalistic rats, all of whom should be fired for unprofessionalism. But they won't be. Many of them are "racials": black affirmative action hires who didn't get their jobs based on their abilities, to begin with. Others are whites who like to suck up to blacks, and harm other whites. It never occurs to Bonds that he routinely plays with people he dislikes. Nor does he consider how he would feel if his confidants routinely betrayed his private thoughts to outsiders, much less that there is a word for people who do their job, even when it requires being polite to those whom they personally despise: Professionalism.

The young Barry Bonds was a schmuck, whose general surliness was made all the more maddening, by his occasional attacks of charm and goodwill. In Bonds' record-breaking season last year, he showed a much more gracious side, but has remained a difficult customer.

In April, Slate's Joan Walsh, an unabashed Bonds fan, did a more honest job than David Grann, in expressing her admiration for the player: "Contrary to stereotype, Bonds' problem isn't that he's a callous asshole, but that he's way too sensitive.... Besides, I'm a Bonds fan because of his frailties, not in spite of them.

"What does it take to love Barry Bonds? Exactly that: Seeing him as shy and strangely fragile and slightly tortured, rather than as a pampered prima donna. I gave it up to Barry only recently, so I can sympathize a little with his detractors. I know their grievances, and so do you: He's standoffish and not wildly popular with his teammates; he won't run out routine ground balls; he's a jerk to reporters; he's not exactly Mr. October, batting around .200 in the playoffs; he's got that big leather recliner, a huge TV and three lockers in the Giants' clubhouse."

The New York Daily News' Bill Madden has provided the most succinct portrait of Barry Bonds as a latter-day Ted Williams. Writing on May 27, 2001, on the eve of Bonds' passing of the Splendid Splinter's mark of 521 home runs, Madden called his column, "Thorny Like Splinter."

"In so many ways, Bonds is the reincarnation of Williams, which is especially sad if, like 'Tempestuous Ted,' Bad Barry doesn't allow us to appreciate him until he's an octogenarian.

"For his remarkable, sure-thing Hall of Fame career, Bonds has chosen to be the sullen slugger, disdainful of the media and dismissive of the fans. Therefore, it is not surprising that after hitting his 10th home run in eight games on Thursday night, Bonds received a standing ovation from only about one-third of the Pac Bell Park crowd.

"Williams was accustomed to the same lukewarm support from the Boston fans. Of course, he was known to go so far as to spit at the fans to demonstrate his contempt for them. Bonds merely makes it clear on a day-in, day-out basis he doesn't give a damn how the fans regard him because he especially doesn't give a damn how the media portrays him....

"So we should not care if, at 36 years old, Bonds is on pace to hit 87 homers this year, just as the fans should not feel deprived by his avowed refusal to take part in the home run hitting contest at the All-Star Game. Plain and simple, Barry Bonds isn't going to do anything to help promote the game. Like Williams throughout his career, he just wants to be left alone. Yet Bonds wonders why the Giants remain undecided about giving him a contract extension.

"He's by far a better all-around player than Williams was, but for all the other reasons, he seems destined to be forever compared to him. How sad, if Bonds, like Williams of recent years, does not start saying hello until the time comes to start saying goodbye."

It is apparently an unwritten rule among politically correct writers never to speak of a black as the "reincarnation" of a white, except perhaps as an insult to someone who's not "black enough" — even when the description is dead-on.

I disagree with Madden, however, regarding Bonds' attitude towards the fans. I think he wants them to love him; he just hasn't been willing to meet them half way.

While giving the appearance of an intimate portrait, David Grann's attempt to turn Barry Bonds into a race-political icon, only adds to the distance between informed reader and subject. Transparent dishonesty will do that. But then, what can you expect from a newspaper that is edited by people who hate sports, and who ran a front-page magazine story a few years ago, suggesting that baseball's lack of popularity among black fans was indicative of some sort of subtle racism in Major League Baseball, Inc.'s approach to them? Once again, the mighty Times has struck out.

To comment on this article or express your opinion directly to the author, you are invited to e-mail Nicholas at adddda@earthlink.net .

Mr. Stix made some reasonably good points up until this whopper, which is pure crap.

Yes, the "Bonds rules" probably do exist in some sense; and yes, Grann probably amplified them in order to give his story more zing. But if Grann's the greenhorn Stix makes him out to be, I suspect that he simply went up to Bonds at a "prohibited time", asked him a few questions, got into his good graces (as might be expected for a guy who's writing a puff-piece on you), and that was it.

This conspiracy angle is probably as bad as anything Grann did.

This author makes two mistakes: 1) The "dilution" of pitching by expansion is not a protracted condition; historically, such "dilution," real or alleged, rights itself within about three seasons. (You may or may not have noticed that, this season, even with the continuing fractuous strike zones, the pitchers by and large have been taking back large enough degrees of plate control - the league ERAs are actually down significantly, and there are several pitchers in each league with excellent chances of finishing their seasons with ERAs under 3.)

2) In the formative years of Aaron's and Mays's careers, the National League still had preponderance enough of the kind of cozy hitter's parks that have been considered criminal since the opening of Camden Yards invited a rash of retropark building many of which are also hitter's havens: Aaron and Mays played half their games on the road, and did a ducal amount of hitting in places like Wrigley Field, Ebbets Field, Crosley Field (in Cincinnati, where in the 1950s the Reds were your classic powerhouse hit/weakfish pitch club), Milwaukee County Stadium, (opened: 1953), the Polo Grounds (forget the park's impossibly deep center field, if you were a pull-hitting power hitter or could go the opposite way, the Polo Grounds to left and right fields was a fair enough hitter's park), even Shibe Park (which remained the home of the Phillies after the Athletics moved to Kansas City, and was a pretty neutral park, overly favouring neither a hitter nor a pitcher to any great extent), and Sportsman's Park in St. Louis (basically a neutral park, when the Cardinals had a decent pitching staff such as they generally lacked in the 1950s). 3)

Aaron and Mays didn't get as close as the author thinks to having to play in an era of pitchers' parks until the mid-1960s, when a few pitcher's paradises - Dodger Stadium, Shea Stadium, the Astrodome (the park was so pitcher friendly that the only conclusion to make about the Astros of the 1960s was that they simply had pitching fairly described, on average, as horsesh@t, at least until Larry Dierker and Don Wilson developed and emerged in 1968-69), Busch Stadium - and a few neutral parks (Riverfront Stadium, Three Rivers Stadium, Olympic Stadium, Veterans Stadium) came online. Bonds also played at least a couple of seasons in the infamous Candlestick and did rather splendidly there. (The myths aside, Candlestick Park was actually a neutral park more than a hitter's nightmare - though Giant batters almost never won batting championships, the Giants of the 1960s were hoisting up a passel of Hall of Famers, three Hall of Fame hitters - Mays, Willie McCovey, and Orlando Cepeda - and two Hall of Fame pitchers, Juan Marichal and Gaylord Perry; not to mention, a couple of guys who might have been Hall of Famers had their heads not been up their arses, like Jack Clark.)

And, for the record, if I had to make the absolute choice between the two, I'd probably give them equal playing time. Ruth has the better offencive stats overall, but Bonds would actually do less to keep your team from winning than Ruth. Bonds is a better outfielder than Ruth was (Bonds's range factor in the outfield, career, through last season: 0.32 above his league. Ruth's range factor in the outfield, career: 0.15 below his league), and Bonds is a no-questions-asked superior baserunner than Ruth (who could not run, either with any speed or with any great intelligence, and cost his team wins enough by his insistence on running the bases at will and costing his team bases; the 1926 World Series, in which he killed the Yankees' last chance to overtake the St. Louis Cardinals in Game Seven - this was the game in which Grover Cleveland Alexander wheeled in hung over from the bullpen in the seventh and struck out Tony Lazzeri with the bases loaded to kill a Yankee rally - by trying on his own to steal second with two out, Bob Meusel at bat, and Lou Gehrig on deck).

And those who insist on judging Bonds solely by the fact that he may be one of the biggest horse's asses in the game should be reminded that a) Ruth himself was one of the biggest horse's asses in the game in his day, a booze-and-broads hound deluxe who was probably lucky that the sporting press of his day was as sycophantic as the sporting press today is not; and, b) Barry Bonds, say what you will about him, never hung a man out the window of a fast-moving train by his heels, not even to be funny. (The Bambino did it - to his own manager. You can look it up.)

But then, I'm going to tell you that I think Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle were way better baseball players than Babe Ruth was in spite of Ruth's surreal offencive stats. (Think about this: If you judge Yankee players by the pennants and World Series they've won, Babe Ruth in a thirteen-year time as a regular won seven pennants and four Series - three of which were won as much if not more because of Lou Gehrig - but Mickey Mantle in a thirteen-year stretch played on eleven pennant winners and seven Series winners.) Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle were the very essence of the five-tool position player; Babe Ruth was not; Barry Bonds, by and large, has been. And it won't kill Ruth's standing as perhaps the greatest marquee idol the game has ever known to say that there came a player better than he in due course, or that there are players today who stand a decent chance of proving to have been better, even, than Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle.

Bonds also played at least a couple of seasons in the infamous Candlestick and did rather splendidly there. (The myths aside, Candlestick Park was actually a neutral park more than a hitter's nightmare...

You can see the lights of candlestick from the nosebleed seats along the left field line at Pac Bell. One game earlier this year, around 7 pm, I could see the fog rolling over the hill and into the Stick, reminding me of the bad old night games over there, Didn't even need a jacket that night at Pac Bell.

The problem players (and fans, for that matter) Have with the Stick is the weather. Some of the night games started out around seventy degrees, no wind, basic short sleave weather, then around the 7th inning or so, The wind picked up, the fog rolled in and you would litterally freeze your ass off. the cold, wet, foggy wind would penetrate layers of blankets and goose down. Your nose, toes, and fingers would get numb near the end of the game. That's the nightmare of the place. Day games were usually pretty plesant.

You're telling me little I didn't already know about the Stick. (I have heard only too many fans who were there call the place the Dip-Stick, among other epithets.) But did you know that Willie Mays in his years playing in Candlestick Park actually hit slightly better in his home park than he hit on the road (and he was always a deadly hitter on the road; his home-road split isn't even close to being the glaring difference that identifies a "homer" - we're not talking Dick Stuart or Dante Bichette here), and that he hit slightly more home runs in the notorious Stick than he did on the road in his Candlestick years? What rates Candlestick as a neutral park is that, by and large, hitters and pitchers did about equally well in the park - Juan Marichal would have been the outstanding pitcher of the 1960s had it not been for a fellow named Koufax (Marichal was better than Bob Gibson, who rates an extremely close third behind the Dominican Dandy and Sandy the K), Jack Sanford had his career year (1962) pitching in the Stick, and a craftsman named Perry wasn't exactly Boom-Boom Beck in the Stick. Willie Mays may have observed that Candlestick was ok once you figured out your way through the flying peanut shells and hot dog wrappers, but whatever its infamies as a baseball park Candlestick Park turned out to be pretty neutral. (If you're a cynic, you can translate that to mean everybody got an equal opportunity hurt in that joint...)

Mr. Stix made some reasonably good points up until this whopper, which is pure crap....

This conspiracy angle is probably as bad as anything Grann did.

Apparently, you have much deeper powers of insight than I do. In the passage you quote, I fail to see any "conspiracy angle," rather than the suggestion of a confluence of interests. Did the writer say that Bonds and the editors of the New York Times sat down, and said, "Here's what we're going to do"? That would be a conspiracy.

In the age of the Internet, a background check could be as simple as doing a google search. Grann himself mentions that in other cases, Bonds would let his cronies filter out requests from writers (e.g., George Will). And it's a simple matter of fact that Bonds abuses many writers. So, why did Bonds treat Grann so differently than he routinely treated other writers? Any writer worth his salt has to explain that.

You can't piss all over someone else's explanation, unless you can provide a better one. Otherwise, you're left standing there, with your own piss all over your shoes and pants.

I stopped writing The Diamond District in July, because the hosting site (Blogspot.com) proved a pain in the ass - crashing about every three seconds whenever I tried to post up or edit a piece. So I moved to WebCrimson and now write and edit a new blogzine, The Polo Grounds: A Calm Review of Baseball. The hosting is far more user friendly and, like the other, I don't get paid but - since I want to be a baseball writer now that I've grown up - I need the clips. I haven't posted a new piece since last week because I've had a busy few days, but I plan to put up my own postmortem on the new collective bargaining agreement, and no small amount of the bull that was said leading up to it, by the weekend...

I have had the pleasure, by the way, of watching at least one baseball game in the following ballparks, too, over my lifetime: the Polo Grounds (in 1962, during the New York Mets' infant season and what a time that was...*snickering*), Shea Stadium, Yankee Stadium, Royals Stadium (now known as Kauffmann Stadium), Wrigley Field, Tiger Stadium (got there in 1998 while traveling around the country), Camden Yards (you may trust me on this one: everything that has ever been said about how beautiful is Camden Yards is true!), Edison Field (Anaheim; formerly the Big A), and Dodger Stadium. In terms of baseball watching, I have been blessed beyond belief to have watched baseball games in those parks.

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