BARRY BONDS IS BACK....YAY?

I would have to say "Nay" on this one, but other's don't share the same opinion. I live in Cactus League territory, so this is my favorite time of the year. Sadly, it is a little tainted right now with the return of Barry Bonds, read that HERE. The San Francisco Giants train about 20 minutes away from me, and right now he is back in uniform as a guest instructor. While news stations and sightings are reported all over Scottsdale I sit here and I groan. What message are we really trying to send here?

Am I the only person in Arizona who has not completely forgotten about the HUGE PEDS bust that went down last year? Biogenesis anyone? Alex Rodriguez and Ryan Braun suspensions ring a bell? It was a disgrace to the game. Now a "celebrity" is in town and everyone is up in a tizzy. I don't get it. We are trying to clean up the game (or at least we want to think we are) yet the poster child of PEDS is in town training people. Hmmmm....

Nothing like a huge contradiction to start out your day, right? Seriously though, I don't understand what the Giants are thinking. They were so turned off by Melky Cabrera and his involvement with PEDS back in 2012 that after the season ended they gave him his Word Series Ring and let him walk his happy self off of the team. They didn't try to re-sign him. They let him walk. End of story. Why is it any different for Barry Bonds? Because he was a franchise icon? Because he never said "Yes I did PEDS" so that gives him a pass? The last time we saw him he was as defiant as ever and was still denying using PEDS as he walked down the Yellow Brick Road to retirement. For the games sake, maybe he should have stayed there.

Now he is back and he is supposed to help mold young kids down at Spring Training? The man who refused to listen to others and be coached is supposed to be THAT mentor. My how times have changed. I find it hard to believe. Even more so, established players are supposed to continue to improve on their skills with his help knowing about his past? I'm sorry but I just don't buy it and I don't understand what the Giants are thinking.

Bonds isn't the only person that has come back to the game that I feel this way about. What about Mark McGwire? After a record setting 70 homeruns during the 1998 season he FINALLY comes clean back in 2010.....and now he has a clean slate and it is ok? I don't get it. I don't understand why first the St Louis Cardinals and now the Los Angeles Dodgers want to be affiliated with this man and employ him as their hitting coach, especially not after he confessed. Newsflash....all of those hits weren't clean, but that seems to have been forgotten read that HERE. What kind of a message are you sending to these younger players? The Dodgers have a very good farm system, and this is the mentor they will have. I just don't get it.

Fans and people within the game have been rallying to "clean up the game" for awhile now. The fact that Major League Baseball keeps the original problem children within the game disgusts me, regardless of the fact that they don't swing a bat anymore. If they want to change the game and see how far it has come, this isn't the way to do it. That's just my take on it though....and if I ran into Barry Bonds and met him it still wouldn't change my opinion.





--Jeana Bellezza, BYB Senior Writer and Editor
Twitter: @NyPrincessJ



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