{"id":13137,"date":"2011-04-01T19:42:05","date_gmt":"2011-04-02T00:42:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=13137"},"modified":"2020-02-15T21:33:24","modified_gmt":"2020-02-16T03:33:24","slug":"why-barry-bonds-must-be-convicted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2011\/04\/why-barry-bonds-must-be-convicted\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Barry Bonds Must Be Convicted"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Last week, noted sportswriter Sally Jenkins used her Washington Post<\/em> column to ask why the United States government was devoting so many resources to the prosecution of baseball star Barry Bonds.\u00a0 Why, she asks, with so many problems in the country, are we expending so much effort trying to convict the all-time home run leader of the crime of perjury, when his real offense, the use of illegal drugs, is so relatively minor.\u00a0 Better, she says, to let Major League Baseball deal with this problem, and let the federal government tackle people who are guilty of more serious offenses.<\/p>\n

To my mind, Jenkins has it all wrong.\u00a0 It is especially important that Bonds be convicted.\u00a0 In the United States, baseball has always been more than just a game.\u00a0 From the 1870\u2019s onward, major league baseball has been equally entertainment and morality play.\u00a0 Every season involves the enactment of a public ritual that emphasizes and validates our most important common values.\u00a0 In a society that celebrates individualism, but only within the constraints of moral norms, baseball celebrated individual accomplishment but always within the context of team play.<\/p>\n

The ability of ordinary young men to rise from rural pastures or urban sandlots, through the minor leagues, to the major leagues reiterated the \u201crags to riches\u201d vision of the United States as a society of unlimited opportunity for people with natural talent and self-discipline.\u00a0 Even the annual example of once great players having to step aside because of age or injury emphasized that in the larger society each generation had to give way to the next and that current ability, rather than reputation or social status, was what really mattered.\u00a0 In other words, major league baseball was a kind of perfect social Darwinist fable.<\/p>\n

One of the central rules of American society has long been that while aggressiveness and cleverness are to be rewarded, cheating is not an acceptable path to excellence.<\/p>\n

Rules of lesser importance, like the ones that govern play on the field, can be bent without undermining the basic message of baseball, but the fundamental rule that only honest effort should be rewarded is not to be violated.\u00a0 Sneaking a spitball past the umpire or only pretending to touch second base while turning a double play are acceptable actions, but bribing an umpire or an opponent or physically harming an opponent while off the field are not.<\/p>\n

Obviously this was always been more myth than reality, and traditional American values have been under attack since the 1960\u2019s.\u00a0 Nevertheless, the myth of American values remains an important myth and one that plays an important role in insuring social cohesion.<\/p>\n

What Barry Bonds did by using prohibited performance enhancing substances and then lying under oath about his actions was to violate not just the integrity of baseball but of core American values as well.\u00a0 Moreover, violating them in the context of baseball made his actions even worse.\u00a0 That he, and his steroid-enhanced cohorts, robbed Henry Aaron and Roger Maris of the home run records, the most prized examples of worthy accomplishment, makes his offense especially reprehensible.<\/p>\n

Because playing Major League Baseball has been the dream of tens of millions of American males for nearly a century and a half, we have a certain quiet sympathy for those who might violate the merit principle to obtain a goal made unattainable by nature\u2019s denial of physical talents.\u00a0 The baseball-loving, but physically inept college chemistry instructor of the movie \u201cIt Happens Every Spring\u201d comes to mind, as does the middle-aged insurance salesman who sells his soul to the Devil for a chance to play in \u201cDamn Yankees.\u201d\u00a0 Bonds, however, deserves no such sympathy since his God-given talents made him one of the greatest players of his generation, making his turn to steroids nothing more than the expression of deplorable greed.<\/p>\n

To convict Barry Bonds of steroid-related perjury is to reaffirm the continued significance of values that have long been central to the American experience.\u00a0 Texas v. Johnson <\/em>notwithstanding, no one has the right to desecrate a national symbol and certainly not for no reason other than personal aggrandizement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, noted sportswriter Sally Jenkins used her Washington Post column to ask why the United States government was devoting so many resources to the prosecution of baseball star Barry Bonds.\u00a0 Why, she asks, with so many problems in the country, are we expending so much effort trying to convict the all-time home run leader […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,28,63],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-criminal-justice","category-criminal-law-process","category-sports-law","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13137"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28948,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13137\/revisions\/28948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}