O Silent Night

It’s 8pm on Saturday night. I am about to turn on ESPN’s nationally broadcast game to watch one of my favorite players play for a team I care nothing about. In my opinion he is a future Hall of Famer. A class act that goes out there every night he has to and gives it his all with what he was born with. He is friendly with the press, signs tons of autographs for kids, helps old ladies cross the street, and despite some legal troubles, remains loved throughout the majors. It is important to remember he is innocent until proven guilty. Tonight he will be trying his best to keep his ass out of the record books. I am referring to none other than Dontrelle Willis.

I don’t know if it was because of his celebrated success on anyone of my, now in shambles, fantasy teams or because he just seems like a nice guy, I always seem to be rooting for him to succeed. He has one of those Rocky-esque rags-to-riches stories that is impossible to root against. His last seven starts have been kind of crappy, though, and he comes into San Francisco ripe for an implosion. The last thing I want to see is for him to land in the history books for giving up a pair of record-setting home runs to that bulbous ass Barry Bonds. I will, at the very least, watch.

As the story goes, my father came into my room on April 8, 1974 and woke me up to have me sit in his lap while Hank Aaron broke the all-time home run record. I’m not entirely sure I knew what baseball really was at the time and I probably didn’t even pay attention to it. I’m sure my mother wasn’t all that pleased to see my sleep schedule being tampered with for such nonsense.

Now I am 36 years old and our first child is expected to show up in eight weeks or so. Would I wake him or her up to sit with me and watch Bonds break the record? Probably not, it’s not worth losing any sleep over. The media has helped to make the evidence of steroid abuse against Bonds seem overwhelming. Even though his appearance would seem to be enough to convict him, he too, is innocent until proven guilty. Who knows, maybe his diet and strict weights regiment was all he needed to achieve his success and all that Balco crap was just as blown out of proportion as his head.

It has now reached the point where I just don’t care about the home run record anymore. Announcers, baseball pundits, and insignificant bloggers are calling for an extra piece of punctuation to help call attention to the plight of the pure athlete and to accentuate what is widely believed to be the truth. Maybe Willis was shit-faced when he was arrested last December. With keys in hand he certainly had the potential to cause more damage than Bonds ever could for his alleged crimes. Without admitting to anything, you could tell Willis was sorry.

The last time Dontrelle faced Bonds this evening he went at him. Bonds nonchalantly popped up to the catcher, it didn’t even look like he cared, but Dontrelle sure did. You could see the extra mustard Willis was reaching back for. He did not want it to be him in the record books next to Bonds’ name and he would not be denied to deny him the record. Dontrelle walked off the field high-fiving everybody on his team, making it plain as day this was no ordinary batter he induced into a mundane pop up. Bonds will have to wait till tomorrow, Willis has something to build on, and a truly great athlete still has sole possession of the home run record.