Blah blah blah --Curt Schilling

Barry Bonds is a great, great baseball player and how much of a jerk he is off the diamond is totally up to his discretion and not up for evaluation by the likes of me. It's too bad the principle reason he gets hated on is because he isn't nice to the media. The media are the vultures.

Bonds admitted that he "may" have taken steroids "unknowingly" in front of all his teammates right in the middle of the clubhouse because his trainer had given him stuff to take in the past that he never questioned.

When your trainer gets arrested and prosecuted for this stuff, of course you're gonna have to admit that you may have taken some unknowingly. It's just like Pujols' latest "admission"... Why isn't HE getting pasted by the media?? Hmmm...

Now did Bonds really take steroids on purpose? The evidence is overwhelming. Not the fact that he got bigger. People need to get off that. I mean the catalog of evidence in the book those guys wrote.

Read a nice collection of Bonds quotes. Reading between the lines, it's not hard to see his point:

Yes, I've taken steroids before. No, I don't really think they helped. I'm not on them right now and I'm still hitting home runs, right? In fact, I don't even think they should be considered a big deal. If people would just stop caring way too much about it, I'd probably freely admit everything. Tons of guys have taken steroids, and only one of us is going to be the home run champion of baseball. So if you want to blame someone about steroids (really, you should just forget about them) then blame Bud Selig and MLB for letting it all go on for years and years and years. Don't blame the one guy who took steroids who happens to be the most successful.

People who hate Barry Bonds follow one of a few particular paths:

1. They are media sheep who hate him just because the media hates him. (Get a brain.)

2. They are baseball purists who don't want their sacred baseball records broken, so they mistakenly blame only Barry Bonds for ruining everything. (Newsflash: Selig and MLB disrupted your sport's purity with an entire steroids era. Barry Bonds is but one measly player who took some steroids who also happens to be the greatest home run hitter of all time.)

3. They are Curt Schilling.

Barry Bonds does not get hated because he took steroids. He gets hated because he's not polite with reporters and he is the most successful baseball player of the past 15 years.

Seriously, HUNDREDS of baseball players took steroids because MLB did NOTHING about it. It was, for all intents and purposes, only "sort of" against the rules. Taking steroids wasn't exceptional. But players are NOT disliked for having taken steroids. No, that takes something much worse: You must be an all-time great hitter who doesn't care what the media thinks.

Barry Bonds has split baseball opinions in two, with most people being on the other side of the coin from me. But as time passes, people will come over to my side, and McGwire will be in the hall of fame like he should be right now.

NO ASTERISKS.