THE QUOTE
“The timing is better for me. Back then, it just wasn’t right.”
WHO SAID IT
Barry Bonds on March 10.
BACKGROUND
Bonds was commenting about his return to baseball at the San Francisco Giants’ spring training camp in Arizona where he is a “roving instructor” to the team’s hitters. Bonds is the major league leader in career home runs (762) and was considered one of the greatest – if not the greatest – player when his reputation and career were ruined by his role in baseball’s steroid’s scandal. He testified in the BALCO case that he never knowingly took illegal drugs, but it was later found that his answers were misleading and he was convicted in 2011 of obstruction of justice.
THE FACTS
Bonds’ quote blames his seven-year absence from professional baseball on mere “timing.” But during that time the Giants had dropped him; no other team would pick him up; and he was spending much of his time fighting the steroids case. And then there was the 30 days of house arrest and two years of probation for the obstruction of justice charge.
TRANSLATION
Bonds employs euphemism in a bald attempt to disguise a past that no one has forgotten. A candid comment would have been: “I would have come back to baseball sooner, but I was in disgrace and no one wanted me, and I was kind of busy trying to stay out of jail.”
