Bonds' poll is questionable

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By BERNIE LINCICOME
Scripps Howard News Service
Wednesday, May 09, 2007

A baseball manager once responded to a poll asking him to list his team broken down by race.

None, he answered. More of his team was broken down by alcohol.

The point is, you see what you want to in these polls, endless as they are, concluding what they do.

Here's another. While it is still permitted to dislike Barry Bonds, your reasons are no longer your own. A poll has been taken to determine what they are.

If at any time you feel like booing him or ignoring him or cheering him, understand that research has determined why you are doing what you are doing.

Your response to Bonds is determined by your race, and by his, more than by anything he might have done or yet might do.

Bonds is unloved more by white people than by black people says the poll, conducted by ABC-ESPN, which is, of course, the last word as well as a whole bunch of letters in the alphabet.

More than half of all baseball fans do not want Bonds to break Henry Aaron's home run record, but many more whites are against it.

While the conclusion is not exactly a shocker, it does assign motives carelessly and supports sympathy for Bonds, who has taken a very long time earning his disfavor.

Bonds has wasted a whole lot of energy and years building his image as a self-absorbed jerk just to have it dismissed as a racial consideration.

To think that Bonds could have spent his career being pleasant and agreeable _ as, oh, Tony Gwynn was or as Alex Rodriguez is _ and still have his legacy defined by race is as silly as it is beside the point.

Surely there will be, or maybe there already has been, a poll examining how many golf fans do not want Tiger Woods to break Jack Nicklaus' major championships record.

I would think this would be divided more by age than by race _ and there is some of that with Bonds, too _ those of Nicklaus' generation wanting to hang on to some standard of their youth and resenting Woods, if at all, for being younger and better.

But the truth is that Woods will be hailed and adored even more so than now the closer he gets. This is because people like him for no other reason than he has given us no reason not to.

The same is true of the search for the next Michael Jordan, ongoing as it has been since Jordan's first retirement. It will matter not the race of the replacement _ odds on to be LeBron James at this moment _ but his deportment and behavior.

What might be more enlightening about Bonds' challenge to Aaron than whether it can be viewed through a lens of race is the lack of fascination with it, much less than when Aaron was after Babe Ruth and racial concerns existed.

Aaron is a man of quiet dignity and pride, and his indication that he will not take part in however loud the carnival gets are reasons that remain his own.

The commissioner, Bud Selig, might not be present for the big moment, either, just as Bowie Kuhn was not there for Aaron. Such a significant moment in baseball should have less dithering.

Bonds is almost into single digits behind Aaron, and the countdown is nearly indiscernible. I suppose that someone will let us know when it happens.

At his current rate, a home run every three or so games, Bonds would pass Aaron sometime in mid-June, and chances are the big hit could come in either Boston or Milwaukee.

Now, Milwaukee has its own obvious irony, but Boston, too, has a late little twist. Curt Schilling, the Red Sox pitcher and persistent magpie, declared on a Boston radio show that Bonds had admitted everything he has been accused of and some things he has not.

While none of it is has been admitted by Bonds and likely has less to do with Schilling being white than being an airhead, maybe some of the natural drama that is missing would get a boost should No. 756 come off Schilling.

Here's the short version. We want our heroes to be heroic, not sulky or phony or chemically enhanced.

It is up to us to whom we give our affection. And not up to some poll to tell us why we do it.

(Contact Bernie Lincicome of the Rocky Mountain News at www.rockymountainnews.com.)