up your architecture.

I sat listening to the radio late last night on the way to Sonic in Sam's car after working late and it came out of my mouth instantaneously and unconsciously, "I'd throw it back". ESPN radio had been discussing Barry Bonds' historic chase of one of the most hallowed records in all of baseball (I'd put it in the top three including Joe DiMaggio's hit streak and Cal Ripken's grueling Iron Man record of consecutive games) and I just blurted it out. And I would. Sam tried to run through the lists of things that one could do with such a historic ball: sell it in a variety of ways, trade it, give it to Cooperstown, keep it. None of these for me would match the ability to single-handedly tell Barry Bonds that he had to cheat himself and baseball to achieve this record. I explained my logic as I will do here...

Barry Bonds took performance enhancing drugs in order to extend his career and make himself more marketable. He didn't do it because he wanted to overcome one of the greatest records in the sport, or because kids wouldn't look up to him for simply being an outstanding outfielder and solid contact hitter. Barry Bonds took drugs to make money. He took the national past time and twisted the love of the game to enhance his way of life and in my opinion he did so knowingly.

In my opinion, the asterisk that was by Roger Maris' name was always one of the most confusing things as a child when I poured through record books memorizing statistics about the long dead heroes of my father's youth. To have something like that put onto another record is simply unacceptable.

There are a couple of organizations on the web, the best of which I think is Boycott756.com. It will donate every dollar pledged to the person that catches the record breaking homer IF and only if, the person throws it back. Otherwise, all money pledged will go to youth baseball. This is something that if I had the money I would like to support. More importantly, I'd like the person to throw it back and then talk about the purity of the sport and how cheating fans and the sport that made you a living... the GAME you played to put food on the table, the INTEGRITY of that sport is worth more than a damn ball.

In fact the part that makes the most mad is his All-Star Game comments in that he doesn't think he has been treated badly on the road this year...

"You ain't going to throw the ball back," he said of the record home run. "They boo, but all those cameras flash every time I swing, don't they? Boo, but click, click, click. …

"I feel disappointed in some of those fans that were influenced by a third-party judgment and have not (taken) the opportunity just to know me. People in San Francisco know me. The fans here know me. Fans outside the city only get to see me three days. To judge me based on a third party, that is what disappoints me … when actually I've done nothing wrong to you."

The thing that I don't know that Barry Bonds understands is that people who really love and revere a sport and its records are suffering the impersonal black eye that he gives to the sport of Baseball. I say "throw it back", watch how Barry reacts, let him seethe, let there be uproar, and let it be known that the statement of a ball being thrown back can say that we may acknowledge your home runs, but we do not recognize your record.

Throw it back.