What can I say. I think it's a stroke of genius. Barry Bond's home run record reeks of baseball's debacle involving cheating using steroids. And he knows it. His response to Marc Ecko is telling. He calls him "stupid" and "an idiot" for spending a quarter of a million dollars and then letting fans decide three choices for the fate of the questionable No. 756 ball: 1) whether or not it belongs in the realm of true heroes (just send it to Cooperstown); 2) treat it a la The Scarlett Letter - forever branding it (nice permanent touch I might add) with a hot ironed-in "*" (asterisk) to denote the truly needed and neglected footnote to his supposed record, or 3) should we just be done with it (and him) and shoot the thing into space. I voted for the second option - no more garbage in space and the reminder should be here on earth that we can't seem to bring ourselves to hold Bonds, and so many others, accountable for cheating.
OK, sure, innocent until proven guilty. And Mark McGuire, and Floyd Landis in cycling doping, and, and, and... Ecko spent his money to turn a moral spotlight on Bond's cheating. And Bonds don't like that because all the doping in the world can't improve a body's sullied soul. And better still that fans will decide since clearly the sports press (standing right behind Michael Vick and his dogfighting for four years until he himself confessed - disgusting...) aren't about to turn on their darlings - for without their cheating they'd all be out of jobs too. Marc Ecko's done a daring, possibly even noble, social act. It's always ugly when someone calls you on it though.
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