Costas stands tall in shadow of Bonds controversy

Barry Bonds' chase of the home-run record took center stage on TV last week, as it will again tonight at Dodger Stadium. It's all Bonds now all the time, until he ties Hank Aaron with No. 755 and passes him with 756.

Winning, losing, truth, ethics, sportsmanship, self-respect-- nothing else counts.

This is a travesty, but only a few announcers of conscience, notably Bob Costas, have stood up and called it that. Aaron himself stands silent from afar. But the great majority have equivocated, like baseball's weasel of a commissioner, Bud Selig. He will attend the great moment to "observe" it on behalf of baseball. After all, he implies, everybody is innocent until proven guilty.

That is the most misleading argument in the Bonds debate. Innocence until proven guilty matters in a courtroom. But we're not in a courtroom -- only in the free-speech court of public opinion. Anybody with an IQ of 80 who has looked at Bonds' body and enormous head and neck knows he's been taking something Frankensteinean in the last 10 years. Why are baseball and most of the announcers who cover it so reluctant to say so?

Of last week's offerings, HBO's "Costas NOW" was the most damning. He introduced Patrick Arnold, the Balco chemist who in Costas' words "created the perfect performance-enhancing drug -- immensely powerful and totally undetectable." Arnold seemed satisfied with his handiwork, which Bonds, as has been well documented, used to beat the system.

Asked flatly by Costas whether he thinks the record Bonds is about to set is legitimate, Selig-the-weasel said: "That's a question, Bob, that I'm going to let others answer. I'm not going to pass judgment on that."

No judgment on baseball's biggest crisis since the 1919 Black Sox scandal? And this is a commissioner?

For his trouble, Costas was called by Bonds in a New York Times account the next day as "a little midget man." Barry is so sweet. Costas' reply: "As anyone can plainly see, I'm 5-6 1/2 and a strapping 150, and unlike some people, I came by all of it naturally."

Juxtaposed with "Costas NOW" were a few shows that underscored the shamefulness of what we're seeing.

Last Tuesday's "ESPN Remembers: The Long Winter of Henry Aaron" featured an unedited 1973 interview of Aaron by Tom Brokaw months before Aaron broke Babe Ruth's record of 714. Just to see Aaron's lithe 39-year-old body compared with Bonds's post-Balco Pillsbury physique was stunning.

Then there was "Beyond 756 -- An ESPN Town Meeting" conducted live in San Francisco Wednesday night. It featured a panel of sportswriters, players and commentators, and a theater full of pro-Bonds fans. Two points struck home.

ESPN's Pedro Gomez reported that there is dissension on the Giants over how the focus on Bonds has shifted the team's view off winning. Since June 1 the Giants have lost 31 of 51 games. Gomez said some Giants -- he mentioned pitcher Matt Morris in this context -- "consider Bonds the worst teammate they've ever had."

The forum conducted an online poll, asking questions like "Do you want Barry Bonds to break the home-run record?" and "Do you believe Barry Bonds knowingly took performance-enhancing drugs?"

Some 86 percent do believe he took them. But the poll results also showed a sizable percentage of those who do don't seem to particularly care.

We live in an age of ethical relativism that threatens to kill a game many of us cherish. Besides Costas, the only announcer who's had it right of late is Fox's Tim McCarver. He put it this way the other day:

"It's a shame that after Bonds breaks the record the conversation will go, 'Barry is the all-time home-run hitter, but ...' This record deserves more than that. With Henry Aaron there were no buts."

* NASCAR -- ESPN, which got back into Cup racing Sunday for the first time in seven years, unveiled a new "draft track" gizmo during the Allstate 400 at Indianapolis. They've invented a way to depict how "clean" and "dirty" air moves over and around speeding cars, demystifying drafting by showing how cars need clean air to race faster.

As interesting as it was, it didn't have anywhere near the impact of "NASCAR: The Families," Friday's two-hour installment of a weeklong historical series on the sport. Producer John Dahl focused on three racing families--the Allisons, the Pettys and the Earnhardts. The film was revealing, brilliant and poignant. ESPN must schedule reruns.

Bill Taaffe is a former award-winning TV/radio sports columnist for Sports Illustrated. His "Remote Control" column is published Tuesday. He can be reached at taaffe-reviewjournal@earthlink.net.