Barry Bonds?

With the injuries to the Mets starting lineup mounting, and the announcement that Moises Alou (who's not quite Ironman) will be out until at least May, Buster Olney of ESPN has stirred the pot by suggesting that the Mets consider adding Barry Bonds. He points out that Bonds is still a better hitter than basically everyone on the Mets in almost all relevant categories. While he sucks in the field, he doesn't suck much worse than Alou, and his hitting is miles ahead of Damion Easley or Marlon Anderson or Endy Chavez or Angel Pagan.

Bonds has been villified by basically everyone over the last few years as a representative of the steroid era and thus the great evil in baseball. But honestly, I just don't see it. I've always felt that the obsession with steroids was a bit absurd - no one ever argued that coke or greenies or whatever people took in the 60s ruined baseball. Is it bad for the players bodies? Yeah, but my liberterian streak is fine with them making choices about how to compete in their chosen profession. Many lawyers harm their loved ones through simple neglect, which sucks, but no one's stepping in to prevent that if that's the path they choose. Anyone who uses steroids to deny that Bonds is the greatest home run hitter ever (especially as we find out that plenty of pitchers were on 'roids too) is a blind adherent to a theoretical "purity" of baseball that never existed.

There's some legitimate arguments against bringing in Bonds based on the way he affects team chemistry, but the Giants didn't seem to hate him. Moreover, as Faith and Fear in Flushing points out, the chemistry on the Mets last year wasn't exactly awesome. Plus, as my boy Beaneball always likes to point out, chemistry in baseball has way less impact than in team sports where offense involves, say, passing or working together more than minimally.

So, yeah, it'd be pretty awesome to see a Mets lineup with Bonds. Imagine Wright and Beltran hitting with Bonds protecting them, or better yet, Bonds hitting with their protection? If he could stay on the field, we'd be looking at 30+ homers (he hit 28 in 340 at bats last year). Barry Bonds isn't a nice guy, and he might be a fucking douchebag, but Darryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden, and Keith Hernandez were also fucking douchebags. They were our douchebags. They were championship douchebags.