Rob Parker, Shut the Hell Up.

So, Hank Aaron won't be there when Barry Bonds breaks the all time home run record. Columnist Rob Parker has a problem with this. I won't go into the minute details of his article here. You can read it for yourself. Suffice to say Parker called Aaron a coward and he believes that by not acknowledging Bonds' accomplishment, Aaron is tarnishing his own legacy and engaging in the same kind of negativity that he himself once faced.

There are so many ways I could react to this ludicrous bit of journalism. I want dismiss, laugh at and slap Parker all at once. Let me just rattle off a few things that come to mind when I think of Bonds and Aaron and the home run record, in no particular order.

1) Henry Aaron, when he was approaching the record, was doing so while playing in the deep south in times of great civil unrest. His career was contemporary with the civil rights movement and the backlash of the white south. He received death threats and hate mail and he played and comported himself with grace the entire time. Barry Bonds has been a pampered, A-1 prick for his entire career. He too has faced much hostility from fans and the media, much of it justified, because he has a personality that hovers somewhere between Dick Cheney and rancid pork chop. I would hardly call their respective pressures comparable.

2) Henry Aaron hit every one of his home runs the natural way. Barry Bonds has been fueled by steroids since at least the late nineties, when he began hitting homers in abnormal quantities. Also abnormal is the way the shape of his head has changed. This is not the result of lifting weights and working out. Is there anyone that even entertains even the slightest doubt that Bonds took/takes steroids? Why else does he look more like he should be grappling with Andre the Giant than trotting around the basepaths?

3) Henry Aaron represented himself, his team, his race and his country with constant dignity. Barry Bonds has done about as much to endear himself to his public as George W. Bush has to the international community: zero. Example: we once stayed in the same Cincinnatti hotel as the Pittsburgh Pirates during a playoff series. The entire team was very patient and gracious to the two young boys seeking autographs in the lobby. Every single player we asked signed, except Barry Bonds, who swept past my seven or eight-year-old brother with a brusque "no." Forgotten somewhere in that lump of a head is the fact that Bonds gets paid more than god because people like watching baseball. What an asshole.

4) The home run record was once the most coveted in baseball, and probably in all of American sports. Since professional baseball began in the 1870s, only one man has hit more home runs than Bonds. Why does no one care that this record is about to fall? Because Barry Bonds is a lying, cheating schmuck. He, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and others have, in a single decade, rendered the record books insignificant and sabotaged baseball's most magestic play.

5) Baseball is a sport where a certain amount of cheating has always been expected. Spitballs and corked bats give the game color. Steroids, otherwise known as drug abuse, do not. Just take a look at Ken Caminiti, dead from a drug-induced heart attack at age 39.

6) Are there any sportswriters left, besides Parker, who support Barry Bonds? Do we really need a Bonds apologist? My guess is that if Parker spent five minutes as the Giants beat writer, he would quickly change his tune.

7) I hope Alex Rodriguez makes short work of Bond's record. Me rooting for a Yankee, folks, tells you how much I hate Bonds.

Yes, Bonds is a great player. Yes, it takes incredible skill and talent to do what he has done. Yes, he is one of the greatest players, blah, blah, blah.

Why the hell would Henry Aaron participate in this sham? This man has earned the right to not be called a coward by hack journalists looking to make a wave.

For further reading, click the links for articles by Jamele Hill and Todd Boyd.

McBone Inc. does not recognize any records broken by Barry Bonds.