Bad News Barry

Television has been running the replays, the newspaper stories are on the front page, the Web sites are giving it big play, but there is something distinctly underwhelming about Barry Bonds hitting No. 756.

It's been a joyless process for many of the journalists chronicling when Bonds would break the record. That, of course, was inevitable, unless Bonds got hit by a bus, but my sense is that there was more revulsion than excitement in the country. After all, we all knew that Cal Ripken was going to break the record for most consecutive games played, but he was surrounded by an outpouring of affection that Bonds never had, or particularly sought.

As an accused steroid user who has never convincingly denied it, Bonds has had to grapple with the widespread perception that he has tainted perhaps the most revered mark in sports.

Add to that a difficult personality and a frayed relationship with the press (Bonds recently called HBO's Bob Costas a 'midget') and it's clear why this is an athlete with a major-league image problem. And I have the impression that he doesn't much care.

Records come and go, but for those of us who grow up as baseball fans, some are rather mystical. Joe D's 56-game hitting streak, for instance. Babe's 60 HR in a season and 714 lifetime. That last one fell more than three decades ago to Hank Aaron, who ultimately hit 755. I remember Aaron surpassing Ruth as a huge national event. Bonds, not so much. It felt more like something we all had to get through.

This holding-the-nose attitude is reflected in much of the sports commentary, beginning with Salon's King Kaufman:

"It almost looked and felt like a regular old celebration of a record being broken. It wasn't, of course. Nothing is that simple with Barry Bonds, except for some of those home fans and the local TV announcers, who steadfastly refuse to mention steroids or controversy. Listening to Giants broadcasts, you'd never know Bonds was anything other than a great player.

"Unless you looked closely. Then you'd have noticed no team officials on the field to congratulate Bonds other than Willie Mays, who has a job with the organization but was there as Bonds' godfather. You'd have noticed no one representing Aaron or Ruth's family.

"I've been thinking and writing for a while now that Bonds is getting a little bit of a raw deal, that he has become the scapegoat for a whole era of drug abuse and cheating, that to dismiss his achievements as steroid- and human growth hormone-fueled is overly simplistic because we don't know what effect drugs have on baseball performance and we don't know which players and which pitchers were on the juice when.

"But that doesn't mean I -- a home fan, after all -- can enjoy this moment any more than most anybody else. I believe Bonds' record is legitimate, that he really did hit all those home runs, that a lot of our reaction as a society to the steroid mess is in-the-moment hysteria -- why aren't we equally upset about amphetamines?

"And Bonds' record still feels somehow unreal to me. I've got an asterisk going."

Slate's William Saletan is terse: