Don't let the door hit you on your way out, Barry

So Barry Bonds is going to hang up the cleats at the end of this season, eh? Awwww. I think I feel a tear coming on.

There is no figure in American sports today that is as clueless as Bonds is about how tiresome his oh-woe-is-me I'm-such-a-martyr act is. Even listening to him - "I'm tired of all this crap going on. I want to play this year out, hopefully win, and once the season is over, go home and be with my family. Maybe then everyone can forget about me" - shows just how tone-deaf he is. You know what, Barry? I think if you went home today, that everyone would forget about you.

Barry's thoughts on race are especially frustrating to me. He uses racism as a crutch, drawing out his race card whenever he feels like he's being treated unfairly. As someone who believes that racism is pretty damn prevalent in today's world, seeing someone cart it out when it's not there is annoying. And as a coach of primarily black baseball players, who is well aware that African-American baseball players have decreased from 24% in the seventies to 9% last year, I'm disgusted that Bonds is the star he is, that the media continues to give him an outlet. Baseball is doing a good job in some areas of drumming up support for baseball in the inner cities - the facility in LA comes to mind - but Bonds is the worst delegate of the game for young people. African-American players like Dontrelle Willis and Garrett Anderson should be getting the attention that Bonds gets.

Really, though, this is about Barry Bonds' arrogance, his victimhood, his hypocrisy, and his whininess. It's not even about his cheating. If he cheated - and I think he did - then it's even worse. But it's about Barry Bonds being the most difficult guy to root for in all of sports when he should be one of the easiest. If there were any justice at all, Bonds will spend 2006 plagued with injuries and retire without a ring.