Jason Whitlock is a black sports writer for The Kansas City Star. Caste Football linked to a column of his in the aftermath of the Pacers-Pistons-fans brawl which contained several very good observations about the need for black basketball players to conform a little more to societal norms. However, Whitlock must have been having a rare lucid day when he wrote that if this article is any indication -- "Bonds is at Center of Witch Hunt."
This one contains strong doses of paranoia about racist conspiracies, i.e. if Bonds weren't black and about to pass Ruth, steroids wouldn't be an issue. The media's after Bonds because he's black. All records pre-Jackie Robinson are meaningless. Andof course hehas to besmirch Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire, and even Cal Ripken in the course of his childish rant.
Whitlock doesn't care, or is incapable of realizing, that despite hisdespicable personality Bonds receives more media coverage than Clemens, Randy Johnson and Greg Maddux combined. If old records are meaningless because white hitters didn't face black pitchers, then current ones should be as well because a black American pitcher in the majors is about as common as a white running back in the NFL. In short, it's the same kind of pseudo-victim nonsense that blacks routinely spout and get away with -- in fact are rewarded for, as Whitlock's piece is appearing in various newspapers around the U.S.:
http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/sports/columnists/j ason_whitlock/11002601.htm?1c
by Jason Whitlock
I'm going to defend Barry Bonds. A lot of what he said last week during a grueling press conference was accurate.
While I'm at it, I'm going to defend Jose Canseco, too. The implied accusation in his controversial book that Major League Baseball was silently complicit while the players juiced up and home-run balls rocketed has a definite ring of truth.
The steroid witch hunt being conducted by the media is a total farce, a convenient excuse to discredit the accomplishments of a man, Barry Bonds, the media have never liked or respected.
Bonds has every right to be combative with the media. We're in no way being fair to the greatest hitter in baseball history.
"You cannot rehash the past," Bonds said last week. "If that's the case, we're going to go way back into the 19th, 18th centuries in rehashing the past, and we'll crush a lot of things in a lot of sports if that's what you choose. ... We can go back into the 1800s and basically asterisk a lot of sports. ...
"We need to go forward, move forward, let it go. Y'all stop watching Redd Foxx in rerun shows, and let's go ahead and let the program work and allow us to do our job."
It seems no one wants to deal with what Bonds is saying, but he's right. Baseball had a lax policy on performance-enhancing drugs for years. The majors didn't test. And as Canseco suggests in his book, George W. Bush and all the other owners really weren't all that interested in testing. Baseball wanted to rebound from the 1994-95 work stoppage, and everyone involved in the game was tickled that bigger hitters were hitting more home runs.
You can't redo the past. You can only learn from it and pledge not to repeat it.
Before 1947, major-league baseball banned black men from participating. This is an unquestioned fact about the modern era of baseball. And we also know that it was at least another 25 years after Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier before the majors were truly integrated.
But no one wants to put an asterisk next to Babe Ruth's or Ty Cobb's accomplishments. They competed in an inferior brand of major-league baseball. In the chase for stats, Ruth had a competitive advantage.
Segregation was a mistake that damaged the game of baseball. The lack of a strong drug-testing policy was a mistake and damaged the credibility of the majors.
"Every time there has been an incident, it has been corrected," Bonds said, "and now that it's being corrected, I think we need to go forward. ... Allow the drug-testing program to work. Allow it to work. I truly believe we need to go forward."
Did Bonds use performance-enhancing drugs when the majors had no rules against them? I don't know. I suspect he did. Heck, I suspect Cal Ripken had a little help playing all those games in a row. I suspect Mark McGwire had a lot of help while hitting all those home runs. I suspect Sammy Sosa and Brady Anderson and Roger Clemens and just about everyone playing professional sports gets a little help the media would deem unethical. There's too much financial incentive not to push the envelope.
But the timing of the steroid witch hunt in baseball is curious at best. Where was President Bush's steroid outrage when he was making money as the general managing partner of the Texas Rangers? It's easy to gain political capital speaking out against steroids now, when Bonds is closing in on Ruth and Hank Aaron.
If Bonds had 450 home runs, no one would be talking about steroids and major-league baseball. It would be a total non-issue, the same way it's a non-issue in the NFL, the NBA and the NHL. There would be rumblings and speculation and an occasional story about the BALCO investigation. But there would be no full-blown controversy.
And if that's the case, what does that say about the motives of the media members and organizations focusing so much attention on steroids?
The time and energy devoted to the story aren't about doing what's right. It's about ratings and sales and journalism awards. There's nothing wrong with that being the motive. It's just that Bonds wants reporters to come down off their high horses and deal with this issue realistically.
Barry Bonds isn't evil. He's not even a cheater. He did what was commonplace in baseball at the time. He's no different from Ruth or Aaron.
Edited by: Don Wassall 
