At the close of this week's season five finale, with the big showdown between the last two contestants, one person will be a loser and the other person will still be a loser.

When I was a boy I wanted nothing more than to be a professional baseball player. Or maybe an astronaut. Or maybe a ballplayer/astronaut. I could've been the first guy to play baseball on the moon. I could've hit 3000-foot home runs in the shadow of Tycho.

I can remember being eight years old and pretending to field grounders by bouncing a tennis ball of the side of my house. Ballplayers seemed like gods to me then. Here were men that got paid to play a game every day. They were paid to be heroes. My strongest desire was to one day join them.

I wanted to crouch down in the infield with the tip of my glove touching the dirt, waiting on the pitch, ready to dive to the side and make an amazing grab that triggers a double play and sets 30,000 people to their feet with a cheer.

Have you ever watched a game of baseball? I mean really watched? There's a moment of mystery as the pitcher and catcher communicate in a secret sign language. Then there's a wild west moment as the pitcher and batter stare each other down from a distance of sixty feet, six inches. The infielders wait like coiled springs. The outfielders stand almost lazily in an endless ocean of green.

Anything other than a hit and everyone on the field resets. They stand to stretch and then recoil to wait again. A hit forces everyone into action as even the crowd takes to their feet, thinking without reason that standing will somehow influence the play.

Baseball has a kind of beauty to it, maybe even a little essential truth. And as a boy I loved it. I desperately wanted to be a part of it. I wanted to crouch in the dirt or race a flyball to the warning track. I wanted to stare down a pitcher just before I swung for the fences. I wanted to wave to the TV camera as I stepped on home plate.

In the years that followed I abandoned this dream as I gradually realized that I wasn't any good at baseball. But I still loved it and still respected it. Over the years I followed the game with varying degrees of interest. And then the strike came.

In the summer of 1994 the players of Major League Baseball decided to stop playing. For eight months the players and owners argued about salary caps and shared revenues. The prima donnas on both sides bickered away the rest of the season. There was no World Series in 1994.

It was the first time any professional sports league had missed its championship game. The World Series had survived wars, depressions, gas shortages and draft riots. Baseball wouldn't stop for Hitler, but it would stop for money.

I was crushed, absolutely devastated. Every day I would think, "They've got to resolve it soon. No one wants to skip The Series." Oh, how wrong I was.

But I still wasn't ready to give up on the game I'd loved for so long. As the strike began to cast a shadow over spring training the owners announced that they would implement replacement players. This thrilled me far more than you might expect.

Replacement players would have been fantastic. "To hell with diamond-encrusted millionaires spitting at fans. I'll take a mechanic from Newark any day." The replacement players were men just like me, men who'd bounced tennis balls against the side of the house while dreaming of the perfect 6-4-3 double play. These men didn't care about salary. These men would have paid to play in The Big Show.

I didn't care that these men were unknown. I didn't care that there would likely be few home runs and no Great Moments. My heart leapt at the very idea of an entire league populated by men who still loved the game, men who were living their boyhood dream, men who were living my boyhood dream and were on the top of the world because of it.

As luck would have it, I was going to be in Milwaukee on opening day and my cousin could get me good tickets at County Stadium. This was perfect. The stars were aligned just right to give me one more glimpse of what I loved as a child.

And then the strike ended. The owners collectively said, "Aw, shucks. We didn't mean it when we said that whole replacement player thing." Opening day was pushed back a few weeks and the replacement players were sent home to Akron and Schenectady.

The strike killed baseball for me. The end of the strike and the return of the prima donnas was just an added insult. I haven't watched a game since 1994. But I still paid attention to the headlines if for no other reason than the pure spectacle of things.

I quiety watched the headlines as the steroid era began. I shook my head as the world inexplicably cheered the fall of the single season home run records to men who openly confessed enhancing their play with questionable drugs that had not yet been banned, men whose forearms had curiously grown wider than their heads or whose faces were suddenly plagued with suspicious adult-onset acne.

What used to be the national pastime has descended into a quagmire of doubt as people who still care struggle to determine who's cheating and what to do about it. Any day now another of baseball's most sacred records will be dubiously eclipsed.

Barry Bonds, godson of the great Willie Mays and son of the underappreciated Bobby Bonds, is among a small group of men who make up the closest thing we have to a baseball aristocracy. And the fucker is cheating. The man's steroid use is so blatant that his skull has grown physically larger. This cheater is about to pass Babe Ruth's all-time home run total.

Baseball used to be something great. At its best, the game was transcendent. Baseball could brush aside everything from riots to wars and remind us of the beauty of sport, the simplicity of play. Even at its worst, the game was still a hell of a good time for everyone. As an eight year old boy, pro ball was a thrill and an honor comparable to walking on the moon. But that was then. That was before the strike, before the steroids. That was before the greed, before "the cream" and "the clear."

The game I loved is long gone. Cheating bastards like Bonds, who care more about personal glory than honor or history, are driving even farther away my memories of what used to be.

I'm going to wrap this up with the last thing you might expect: my blessing. Go on, Barry, if you must. Eat, smoke, inject, snort and insert rectally whatever spurious substances you need to achieve whatever goals you've set for yourself. Go ahead and tear down all of the game's icons. But keep in mind this one name: Roger Maris.

In 1927 Babe Ruth set the gold standard by hitting 60 home runs in a single season. In 1961 Roger Maris hit 61. But the season had been lengthened by 8 games. Ruth hit his home runs in 154 games where Maris took 162. America silently judged Maris and found him unworthy of unseating a legend. Baseball minimized his achievement, despite the fact he'd done nothing wrong. Maris played fairly and honorably but his greatest accomplishment, indeed the rest of his life, was clouded by an asterisk.

History has judged Maris unfairly. Bonds' judgment will be harsh but well-deserved.

So go ahead, Barry. Pillage the temple as you wish. Baseball is already dead. What more could it hurt? Besides, we all know you're a cheat. We've got your asterisk all warmed up for you and everything.
 

Barry Bonds - 713 career home runs*