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During a relaxing moment in an otherwise exhausting season, Barry Bonds stood in front of his locker before a game last summer and playfully re-enacted a conversation with his wife about the fickle nature of the Most Valuable Player Award. Bonds howled as he recalled his wife, Liz, telling him: "Just think how many MVP's you would have won if the people voting actually liked you." As controversial as he is prolific, Bonds, of the San Francisco Giants, has transcended the notion that post-season awards are popularity contests for the game's best players. The Baseball Writers Association of America voted Bonds the National League Most Valuable Player today for the fourth year in a row and the seventh time overall. No other player in Major League Baseball history has won the award more than three times. No player in the history of the National Basketball Association or the National Football League has been a league M.V.P. as often as Bonds. Over the weekend, Bonds saw Michael Jordan and said that Jordan told him, "Barry, do you understand what you're doing?" Bonds shot back, "No, did you?" A 40-year-old left fielder, Bonds is the oldest M.V.P. in baseball history, but he is actually younger than the National League's Cy Young Award winner, the 42-year-old Roger Clemens. The 40-and-over demographic has dominated the post-season awards thus far. Bonds, unlike any player from any era, has achieved the height of his productivity in the latter stage of his career, giving his supporters reason to tout him as the best hitter ever, and his critics ammunition to view him suspiciously. Bonds has put together more inspiring seasons than the last one, but none was so intriguing. He started out in a steroids scandal because his former trainer and nutritionist were indicted for distributing performance-enhancing drugs from the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, known as Balco. Then he moved into third place on the all-time home run list, set the career record for walks, broke his own single-season walks record, and hit his 700th career home run. But he wound up today at the same place he started. Asked about his training regiment and his relationship to Balco, Bonds turned a routine conference call celebrating the M.V.P. award into a series of signature sound bites. "I've been dealing with adversity my whole life," Bonds said. "I had four black kids in my school. The only thing that affects me is that these things are hurtful to my family, hurtful to my children." Asked about claims made by Gary Sheffield, the Yankees outfielder, that he was given a cream containing a steroid while training with Bonds in 2002, Bonds said: "I love Gary Sheffield. I just don't have any respect for the media for having African-American players degrade other African-American. I won't degrade any African-American players or any minority players." And asked about recent reports strengthening the link between Bonds to his former trainer and nutritionist, Bonds said: "I think you're going too deep, sweetheart, so we'll end that real quick," and concluded the call. |