Bryan Burwell

Nothing is simple as it used to be with Barry Bonds, not the hatred or the love, not the villainy or the celebrity. As he erased one of the most iconic numbers in American sports, somehow everything that used to seem so obvious about baseball’s most polarizing figure — good versus evil, right vs. wrong — has been blurred beyond recognition.

In San Francisco during baseball’s All-Star Game festivities, Bonds was surrounded by a fascinating coterie of love and support. His all-star peers all but genuflected in his presence. The fans in his hometown ballpark, AT&T Park, cascaded him with love and cheers. If you had traveled across the galaxy and landed in this place with no historical context to the Giants slugger, you would have believed this man was the sport’s most famous star, not its most infamous scoundrel.

And now there is an even more confusing plot twist, as he chased and finally broke Hank Aaron’s all-time home run mark: Somehow Bonds has evolved from villain to victim.

“I like Barry Bonds and I find the press coverage of him to be incredibly one-sided. Just because he won't play nice with reporters, you folks have vilified him… It still has not been proven that Bonds took steroids. Even if he did, who cares?”

E-mails like these come flooding in from across the country whenever I write a column daring to question the legitimacy of the Giants slugger and his chemically enhanced pursuit of Henry Aaron’s all-time home run record. The tone of these emails are frighteningly similar to the ones that came following any column I wrote criticizing Mark McGwire and his steroid-tainted legitimacy.

These passionate, yet ill-informed pockets of support seem to suggest that we should ignore the obvious — that the reputations of baseball’s biggest stars and the validity of its most honored records are being tainted by magic potions, imaginative chemists and their muscle-bound lab experiments/athletes. In their eyes, Bonds, much like McGwire, is a persecuted casualty of the sports media’s war on drugs.

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In their eyes, Bonds is a victim of a sinister conspiracy. It’s the media. It’s racially inspired. They tell you it’s a senseless chase and a victimless crime. But mostly what they’re saying is that they only care if the cheater is from another town, another team or another country, which is another way of reciting the ultimate modern sports fan’s new creed:

“We know he might be a lying, cheating, muscle-bound fraud with a syringe stuck in his butt. But he’s OUR lying, cheating, muscle-bound fraud with a syringe stuck in his butt.”

So everyone finds a way to twist the truth and fudge reality. And the latest episode in the Barry Bonds Second to One Reality Show is this galling plot twist: How did Bonds suddenly become a martyr for the civil rights movement? Better yet, how did this lifetime brother of convenience suddenly become the Jack Johnson of his generation, while at the same time Hank Aaron — one of the most legitimate American sports heroes of this or any generation — ends up getting painted as some racial sellout?

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Lately I have been getting a lot of e-mails from young black men who are mad with Aaron and claim he is the bad guy because he has chosen not sanction an admitted drug cheat who is on the verge of breaking his record.

Oh brother, please.

Anyone who honestly thinks that Aaron is the bad guy and Bonds is the tragic victim either has absolutely no sense of American history, or is a complete idiot.

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OK, I know what I’ve done. I’ve just fired the loaded gun. I know exactly where this is about to lead. It’s leading to a barrage of “sellout” and “Uncle Tom” nonsense from folks who are anxious to misuse America’s most lethal weapon of mass distraction: race.