Listen up MLB...Bonds vote was a mandate

The vote for this year’s Major League Baseball All-Star teams should be a mandate.
A mandate of what you ask?
It should be a mandate that tells the government and the league’s administration to leave Barry Bonds alone.
It’s a mandate that the American public isn’t as turned off by what the mainstream media wants to turn Bonds into.
Bonds is not the evil that most suggest because of his alleged steroid use.
Instead, Bonds will be a starter on the National League All-Star team. In other words, government, get out of baseball.
While I myself, an avid baseball fan, love to see a pitcher’s duel, most fans would rather see a slugfest. I love to see great defense and great strikeouts. I love to stand up at a ballpark when a batter has two strikes against him, cheering for my pitcher to strike him out.
That’s just me.
America doesn’t have the same thought process.
Fans of the game want to see the long ball. Most fans want Bonds to break the all-time homerun record. Sure there are those that heckle him, but those are people in opposing parks. They probably would’ve heckled him anyway. They’re just using their “assumed” ammunition on him now.
After all, Bonds’s name is mud, right? That’s what the government and Major League Baseball has tried to make you think. For so long now, he has been the conversation topic all over the sports world. Media markets everywhere have discussed Bonds and his alleged steroid ties.
I’ve ignored all that. It has not changed my perception of Bonds at all. Personally, I really don’t care one way or another. All I’ve cared about is his race for Hank Aaron’s record. All I’ve cared about is how entertaining baseball was in the late 1990’s when Bonds, Sammy Sosa, and Mark McGuire were electrifying the crowds.
Why can’t, we the media, just leave it alone? Why can’t we just put steroids back in the closet?
If some athletes want to use steroids, it’s their choice. If they’re caught, then they’ll probably go to jail.
The witch hunt for Bonds, however, needs to stop. It’s not good for the game. Ratings were at their peak during the late 1990’s and now they’ve faltered.
They’ve faltered because everybody’s sick and tired of hearing about how Bud Selig or the government is embarrassed or are after Bonds. Enough is enough. Leave the man alone. In the entire world of sports, the one man that I wouldn’t want to be is Bonds. The harassment is neverending.
Let’s just put the bad blood back in the closet. Let’s leave Bonds, Sosa, and McGuire alone. Let’s let whatever magic happened in the 1990’s live and breath in the minds of the children that were mesmerized by the homerun race.
Bonds is five homeruns from Aaron’s record now. Let the man break it in peace. Bonds deserved to be an All-Star this year. The fans got that one right. The one that they didn’t get right was Sosa. Sosa deserved to be on the All-Star team as well. He’s the best player on the Texas Rangers and he should have been rewarded.
Bonds, on the other hand, could quite possibly be the greatest baseball player to ever live. Personally, I’m not a fan. Not because he’s a possible steroids user, but because he plays for the Giants. Anytime the Giants come to Turner Field, I will boo him with the rest of the Atlanta Braves fans.
I boo him because he’s probably the best hitter to ever live and I don’t want him to crush the ball off of John Smoltz, not because I think he “might” be a steroids user.
On the flipside Mr. Bonds, it’s a two-way street. Drop the attitude and help your sport. Everywhere black athletes are talking about how there is a decline of black baseball players.
You’re the greatest baseball player to ever live and oh yeah, you’re also African American. Go on television, shoot commercials, and do everything you can to be an ambassador for the game. Baseball fans of all races deserve that.
You do that and I think everyone will leave this whole steroids mess where it belongs - in the past.