So says Barry Bonds to the Hall of Fame, should they allow Mark Ecko to deface Bonds’ record-breaking baseball before putting it on display:
I won’t go. I won’t be part of it, you can call me, but I won’t be there. I don’t think you can put an asterisk in the game of baseball, and I don’t think that the Hall of Fame can accept an asterisk. You cannot give people the freedom, the right to alter history. You can’t do it. There’s no such thing as an asterisk in baseball.
I will never be in the Hall of Fame. Never. Barry Bonds will not be there.
That’s my emotions now. That’s how I feel now. When I decide to retire five years from now, we’ll see where they are at that moment. We’ll see where they are at that time, and maybe I’ll reconsider. But it’s their position and where their position will be will be the determination of what my decision will be at that time.
I doubt many of the sportswriters in the anti-Bonds camp would have thought it could be so easy to keep him out of the hall. I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to see a whole slew of articles and Op-Ed pieces written suggesting that poor Mr. Ecko has the right to *sniff* do whatever he wants with his ball, and who the hell is Bonds to tell him otherwise.
Talk about fuel for the fire, Bonds is my age, and he still hasn’t learned when to just shut the hell up.
UPDATE: I’ve been saying Prince Fielder is the best young player in baseball for quite a while now. Now, the venerable Bill James has run the numbers and discovered, lo and behold, that I’ve been right all along:
I don’t think Fielder should be the NL MVP, although he will get some votes, and, let’s face it, he is not exactly a Prince of a Fielder. But 23-year-olds who hit 50 home runs don’t come around every year.
Hooray for me!
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John,
I dunno if this has been said elsewhere, I couldn’t find an email address to send to you (sorry if it’s obvious and I just missed it) but can you kil the stupid Snap Shots thing? It takes forever to load your page now, and they pop-up when i’m trying to find links I want to follow, blocking the other links. It’s a really annoying thing, like the advent of Pop-up ads.
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Thanks.
bbstucco
i wish barry had said he would not accept entrance into the hof for what they did to buck o’neil and/or what they did to robbins and sarandon….but this is just as good
eff the hall and its wingnutty ways
I was happy to see James give Matt Cain a little love in the article linked. You would be surprised how many people I’ve talked to think that Cain isn’t a very good pitcher because his W/L record. A friend of mine was trying to convince me that Doug Davis was a better pitcher, I wanted to retch.
Who cares really? The Hall has been a joke for awhile now.
The Hall is not a joke. Jokes are funny. The HOF has descended into political theater.
The HOF membership consists mainly of corrupted mainstream print media trained in schools of agenda-driven, politically correct, journalism.
Any institution, such as the HOF, that prides itself on the numbers of people it can keep out is as elitist and morally bankrupt as a patrician Country Club. To accept a defaced and vandalized artifact and claim it as historically important, is an insult to the intelligence of any fair-minded human being. Can you imagine the Louvre accepting a recently discovered “Renoir” with an asterisk carved into it by a bidder on E-Bay claiming “Art Aficionados” voted to asterisk it before donating it? Ridiculous on its face. But too many have been conditioned to accept the ridiculous as reasonable by the little cunts like Mark Ecko because they are quasi-celebrities.
The HOF leadership’s vendetta against Bonds is just one more example of the squishy world of slime that MLB exists in under the stewardship of one Alan Hubert Selig. Though MLB has no direct control of the HOF, the Commissioner has the bully pulpit. That Selig continues his condoning of the shameful treatment of Barry Bonds makes him (Selig) one of the more despicable personages upon the public scene. The image of Bud Selig slouching with his hands in his pockets non-nonchalantly blowing off Bonds’ tying of Aarons’ record in San Diego was as despicable a gesture as an outgoing president picking his nose just as the Chief Justice was adminstering the oath of office to the newly elected president. Bud Selig is a spineless, cowardly, money-grubbing little scum-bubble. Bad for baseball. Bad human being
Good for Barry Bonds for telling Bud Selig, the HOF and Mark Ecko to fuck themselves where they breathe…their respective assholes.
Oldrips: I wrote a similar letter and got the exact e-mail response. Rather than send me some fucking form letter, I’d rather they had just ignored me.
I wrote to the HoF using the same link and got nothing. I’m not sure which is better.
[...] сообщения от Aaron тут… Filed under: Sport, Shot taken by at 11:24 pm | so [...]
I wrote to the Hall on 27 Sep via the same link and received (today) the exact same response as Oldrips.
Perhaps Bonds shouldn’t have said anything because the public has grown tired of him… but the issue is pretty obvious to me. The HOF should have a lot more integrity than accepting a piece of baseball history that has been soiled by fan opinion. All you have to do is look at precedent… if some fan bought a game used John Elway helmet off ebay and replaced the Bronco sticker with a Cleveland Browns logo, would the Football HOF put it on display? If a Yankees fan catches the record breaking ball from A-Rod, and brands it with a dollar sign, will the HOF put it on display? Fans are filled with unparalled hatred towards opposing players… it would be a sad day if a respected institution like the Baseball HOF allowed that irrelevent hatred to leak into their product.
Thought you might be interested in this. A while back I wrote to the Hall of Fame expressing my distatst with their actions:
Department:
info@baseballhalloffame.org
Subject:
Home Run Ball #756
Question and/or Comment:
I am very perturbed that the Baseball Hall of Fame is participating in the very public “attention grabbing” situation with Mr. Ecko. As a museum, it should be about preserving pieces of baseball history as memorabilia. Participating in Mr. Ecko’s scheme to deface the ball in question for the sole purpose of making attention grabbing headlines and making a statement about his feelings about Mr. Bonds is very distasteful on the museum’s part. The right thing to do by the Hall of Fame would’ve been to inform Mr. Ecko that you would accept the ball as long as it was intact and not defaced. It is shameful for the museum to be involved in this publicity stunt. The Board of Directors of this museum should apologize to the public for getting involved in this.
===================================================
Here is their response (just received today):
Dear Friend:
Thank you for your letter regarding Barry Bonds’ 756th home run baseball which is being donated to the museum. Thank you for taking the time to express your views and we apologize for the delay in returning a reply.
We understand your consternation in the Museum accepting this donation, but we strongly believe it is a relevant and important artifact that belongs in Cooperstown. As an American history museum, our core mission is to tell the story of baseball history, both in the context of how it unfolds on the field, and also as it relates to American culture.
As you know, the baseball from Bonds’ 756th home run is being donated with an asterisk affixed to it. We do not condone defacing artifacts and would have preferred the baseball be donated in its natural state. We were willing to look beyond that in this instance, because of the historical relevance connected to the baseball. We will explain why it is defaced and what led to it being donated to the Museum in that condition.
In our opinion, the baseball speaks to many significant parallels between baseball and culture in 2007, some of which include: a representation of baseball fans’ sentiments about the home record, for a one-week period in September 2007; a symbol of the adversity Barry Bonds had to endure in passing Hank Aaron to become the all-time home run champion, and; the passion baseball fans have for baseball history, as evidenced by the popularity of the online poll, in which 10 million votes were cast during a one-week period.
When this artifact is eventually donated and placed on display in the Museum, the entire story — from when the baseball left Barry Bonds’ bat and ended up in Cooperstown — will be presented fairly and balanced with facts and not supposition: We share baseball history through exhibits and let our visitors interpret their own feelings.
Additionally, please know we have several other artifacts graciously donated by Barry Bonds from his career, including his historic 755th and 756th home runs.
We hope this sheds some light into our thinking. Thanks again for sharing your opinion, which we value.
Neyer weighs in on Bonds:
I don’t fault Bonds for saying something. Why not? I think a big F-U to the Hall wouldn’t be a bad idea.
I know BLB gets himself in trouble shooting from the hip, but I think he had to speak about this one. The HoF tacitly approved of the ‘branding’ of the ball. I’m glad Barry is pissed off about it–he should be.
[...] StatsGuru created a sweet baseball article today.Heres a mini excerpt.I don’t think you can put an asterisk in the game of baseball, and I don’t think that the Hall of Fame can accept an asterisk. You cannot give people the freedom, the right to alter history. You can’t do it. There’s no such thing as an … [...]