SPORTS TALK · Issue 1

Bronx Bomb by Bonds, and I Can Still Hear the Haters

What pulls us toward sports — and life — is that you can’t recreate the moment. Each second challenges you to respond, to feel, to decide how much it matters. It quietly asks: Do you love this enough?

We witness greatness and try to appreciate it, but most of the time we don’t know how. Sometimes, we don’t even realize how great something truly is until it’s gone.

Enter Barry Bonds.

I can still hear the haters — they’ve become a kind of muse. Every insult just deepens the myth. The more they try to tear him down, the larger he looms.

Centuries from now, they’ll still be telling stories about Barry Bonds. And I doubt he’ll be any more understood then than he is now — which is to say, barely at all.

But as they say: Real ones know.

Here’s a shot in the upper deck at Yankee Stadium: