Fan Speak 7/1/07

Give Bonds his due

BARRY BONDS is one of the greatest baseball players ever. All Barry Bonds has ever known is performing at the extremely high levels of the national pastime. Many athletes have strung together a few good career years. Most come and go. Barry Bonds has been a superstar and all-around performer for 20 years. He is a 13-time All-Star and was named The Sporting News' "Player of the Decade" for the 1990s. He has won an unprecedented seven MVPs. Dig a little further and you learn that Barry is an unselfish philanthropist whose devotion to community and underprivileged youth causes are second to none. I've read excerpts of "The Game of Shadows," where bits and pieces of off-hand gossip and illegally leaked Grand Jury testimony were weaved into a stunning soap opera of baseball life. No doubt there is some truth to allegations of steroid use by players in an era when little was known about their effects and side-effects. A lot of very strong baseball players cannot hit a baseball, run a base or catch a slicing line drive. Barry was never respectful to the hordes of baseball press. Payback is what you are hearing mostly now. Barry Bonds is a Hall-of-Fame athlete who deserves the utmost respect from all real baseball fans.

Where was the media?

A FAST-PITCH softball tournament was played at the Shawnee complex and none of the media was at it. Open the paper and there were five pages of golf coverage from the junior tournament. Why? I'm not sure. Next time, I'd suggest you get your stuff together.

Reporter will be missed

THANK YOU, Jeremy Joffray. You have been amazing to the this area. You will be missed by many. Thanks for all the work you've done over the past years. I wish you luck in your future.

(Jeremy Joffray, who covered high schools for the Southeast Missourian sports department for four years, left the paper recently and will return to law school in the fall.)