He isn't going anywhere, folks.
He isn't going to change his attitude. He isn't going to stop filling McCovey Cove with white, leather balls held together by red stitches.
We all must accept that San Francisco Giants' leftfielder Barry Bonds is going to, barring injury of course, break Hammerin' Hank Aaron's career home run record.
Ceremonial first pitches were thrown out all over the country Sunday and the countdown began. Bonds enters the season just 21 long balls shy of Aaron's record 755 bombs, which begs the question: Is it that big of a deal?
For the better part of a decade, controversy about steroids and records being broken under questionable circumstances has dominated the airwaves.
Whether it is Bonds, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Jose Canseco or Rafael Palmeiro, in some scenario, we've scrutinized every number and queried every statistic.
I'm fed up with it and ready to move on.
To me, baseball is a beautiful game that I grew up playing, and I will not allow any pharmacist to ruin it for me.
No longer does it matter to me whether they use the cream, the clear, Winstrol, or human growth hormones.
I will be relieved when Bonds clubs another long drive into the Bay Area skyline, igniting a roar from the home crowd and groans from every couch outside of San Francisco.
The mystique of the chase for Aaron's record has been lost. Unlike McGwire and Sosa's magical summer of 1998, the masses would much rather see Bonds' name on the disabled list than in the record books.
Bonds is past his prime and will probably hang up the No. 25 for the final time at season's end and never man the territory he once did with such prowess. His defensive skills have diminished in recent seasons. His reputation is shot.
Following Bonds' exit from baseball, he will become a recluse. His disdain for the media will lead him to seclusion where he will deflate (his body, not his ego).
He will no longer lead every episode of SportsCenter or his face grace the pages of every sports publication. No longer will columnists like me have to write about him.
If it will help, I'll gladly don a uniform, take to the mound and groove a few pitches if it means he'll be gone sooner.
Simply put, this season may be the year Bonds breaks the record, but it will not be my foremost memory.
There will be dozens of storylines to follow throughout the marathon that is a baseball season, and my advice to all readers is find one of the others to latch onto. Don't allow Bonds to drag you down as he has the sport.
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