Bonds
Buster Olney from ESPN has written a column about Barry Bonds that's a must read. Buster writes about a Cooperstown induction speech that could have been, should have been, but won't be given. Barry may someday be inducted into Baseball's Hall of Fame, but his reputation and itegrity have been tarnished. Here is some of what Buster imagines the induction speech could have sounded like.
"Sure, the end of his career got a little ugly, as it did for the rest of us. Barry's knees were killing him, but he played through it, for the last five years of his career. He wasn't hitting 70 homers, like some of his peers, but he played the game with the highest possible integrity. Those 25 homers he hit in his last year, in 2004, we can take those to the bank. We can take everything he accomplished at face value."
"He didn't finish his career with as many homers as Henry Aaron, or Babe Ruth, or myself, or Frank Robinson. But Barry was the best player of his generation -- one of the greatest of all time."
The crowd cheers loudly.
"In recent years, you have seen a lot of the stage behind me empty, and you know why. A lot of the Hall of Famers won't come when they presume that the inductees put something in their bodies that wasn't supposed to be there. But now look behind us. The stage is packed. Look, we all know Barry has been a bit prickly from time to time. But we all know the choices Barry faced, and the choices Barry made, and because of that, there is no player from his era more respected."
"With that, I want to introduce to you my godson, Barry Bonds."
There are cheers, and as Bonds rises from his chair, the Hall of Famers behind Bonds rise, as well, and clap.
It behooves us all to pause from time to time to reflect on how we want our lives to end. To reflect on how we want people to remember us. When a person lives a life of integrity, at the end of their life, people don't have to lie about what they say about them.
The choices we make today shape our future. What kind of life are you building? What kind of heritage do you want to leave behind? I long to hear the words, "Well done my good and faithful servant." And I long for my family to remember me as one who was faithful to Christ in my generation - one of the greatest men of all time.
1 comment:
What I found interesting in this, was this speech of integrity being given by Willie Mays. There are numerous reports of Mays keeping a jar of "red juice" liquid amphetamines in his locker... MAys was also temporarily banned from baseball in the 70's-80's for consorting with Atlantic City gamblers.
While I get the gist of the article, and I understand the MAy-Bonds godson suggestion, I think we'd be bitching about Mays' so-called integrity if he were actually to give this speech.
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