11/23/24
August 12, 2007
It's image, image, image Barry: “There’s a big difference between a court of law and the court of public opinion,” said Mike Paul, the president of MGP & Associates PR in New York. “I’m sure an attorney is telling him, ‘You can’t say you’re sorry or that you took steroids,’ but it’s the only thing that would repair his reputation.”
Court of public opinion penalties are all minor compared to court of law penalties as O.J. Simpson on his worst day could tell us. If Bonds stays the jerk he supposedly is until the end then he might even score points with some folks for consistency. "He is who he is," or some defense of Bonds along those lines. It worked for Ty Cobb.
posted by Newbie Walker at 06:35 PM on August 12, 2007
Good grief. There is no way that bonds is going to apologize now. That would be too painful and would only cause his records to be truly labled with an asterisk. Whether he plays next year or not, depends on how much of a salary cut he'll be willing to take. He will not be a box office draw anymore, so he'll have a much lower worth to teams.
posted by dviking at 09:32 AM on August 13, 2007
An apology would mean nothing to me at this point. Too many apologies these days are not really apologies. An apology would be something like, "I did something wrong, and I am truly sorry I did that." Today's apologies are more like, "I have no regrets, but I am sorry some people are upset by what happened." Hank Aaron thanking him says more about Hank Aaron than it does Barry Bonds. The true tragedy here, to me, is that he would have gone down as one of the top few hitters in the history of the game WITHOUT using. The steroids/HR chase has taken attention away from the fact that he is a once-in-a-generation gifted hitter.