Bashing Bonds

So Barry Bonds has finally passed one of my heroes, Hank Aaron, as Major League Baseball's home run king. There are about 150 million people bashing the cheater in America right now, but one voice definitely stands out to me: Dale Murphy.

In case you don't know the guy, he's the two-time National League MVP who carried the Atlanta Braves through the 1980s. Beyond the 398 career home runs and MVPs, the man deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. Not only is he one of the classiest guys to ever play the game, but imagine what the Braves would have been like without Murphy in the 1980s. It's a shame that Barry Bonds will probably enter the Hall of Fame before Murph (although I'm certain the Veterans Committee will put Murph in Cooperstown, even as numbers-obsessed writers pass on him.) On a Salt Lake City radio show Monday, Murphy said of Bonds:

"He's deserved all the negative publicity that he's getting. ... You usually get what you deserve. This is what Barry deserves. He's a hard guy to like. He's a hard teammate to have and, you know, he's set a terrible example for our kids. ... The guy would have been one of the great ones anyway ... But now, he sucked the fun and the life right out of it. ... I mean, Hank would have hit 855 if he had the same advantage."

Dale Murphy's a guy who took out a full-page ad in the Atlanta paper when he was traded to Philadelphia to thank fans for their support over the years. He was a milk-and-cookies guy, not a steroids guy. He wouldn't even come out of the showers until the female reporters left the locker room. I've been in these locker rooms with female reporters, and a lot of pro athletes make an extra effort to walk around the female reporters after hitting the showers. (They wouldn't grant me the same access to the Atlanta Falcons' cheerleaders' locker room -- which is blatant sexual discrimination, but that's beside the point, I guess.)

By the way, also neither here nor there, my favorite Murphy story. Coming up as a catcher in the Braves' organization, Murph had a strong arm, maybe too strong. He kept overthrowing second base anytime they tried to steal. One particularly bad day when all his throws sailed way over second base, his dad comforted him by saying: "Don't worry, son, if they had tried to steal center field, you'd have had 'em every time."

Also, I loved the headline in today's New York Post, below:

Same ol' Braves

I can't believe my Atlanta Braves have lost 6 out of 8 games, just as I was starting to become a believer again. Oh well, I loved them when they were the lovable losers of the 1980s, so I guess being two games out of first place in the NL East is hardly the end of the world.

And there's a part of me that kind of misses those lovable losers of the 80s, when poor Dale Murphy had to carry the whole team on his back while Claudell Washington was snorting the outfield lines, Dion James was killing birds and Bob Horner was nursing hangnails on the DL. Lovable losers like me have gotta have heroes too, you know. Plus, when you were 30 games out of first place, any win was cause for celebration.

But I know the Braves are gonna be in it all year. And you've gotta believe in a team that truly feels like your local team with so many Georgia and Alabama boys on it. It's like having a local American Legion team in the Major Leagues.