The Bonds/Soprano Complex

Barry Bonds pleaded not guilty last Friday in a San Francisco federal court building to four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice, a preliminary proceeding in the looming circus now known as US v. Barry Bonds. The rise and fall of Bonds, who stands accused of lying before the BALCO grand jury in December 2003, have a parallel in the story of another flawed protagonist of the modern American narrative, Tony Soprano. If Tony wasn't a fictional character, he and Bonds might have been friends, given how much they have in common. Or maybe Tony would have hated Bonds, but that has much more to do with his inclination toward self-righteous moralizing, self-delusion and penchant for racism than anything else. If Tony could have seen beyond that, he might have noticed that he and Bonds were kindred spirits: outlaws who rejected mainstream norms and values and had the audacity to live beyond the rules of legality and fair play. They each pushed the system as far as it would let them, Tony as the boss of a New Jersey organized crime empire, and Bonds as a record-breaking steroid abuser who hijacked America's national past-time. The FBI had been building a RICO case against Tony for years before Sopranos creator David Chase turned off the show's lights in June, but the Bonds trial offers a glimpse into what might have been for America's favorite gangster.

While both men may seem like social deviants to us regular folk, they actually behaved quite normally in the context of the exclusive worlds they inhabited. Tony, while committing and authorizing murder, extortion, savage beatings and a host of other misdeeds, rigidly adhered to "the rules" of the Mafia, a code passed down for generations. And although Bonds has remained the dominant symbol of baseball's steroid era, it seems clear that hundreds, if not thousands, of professional baseball players have abused performance-enhancing drugs since the 1980s. Bonds is far from the only player to have used steroids — the current rumor has it that George Mitchell will name 60-80 in his investigative report to be released today — but he is the most successful, and perhaps the most defiant, a trait which led to his alleged perjury.

Here were two men driven by the powerful memories of their idealized fathers, who followed in their footsteps and ultimately rose to heights that neither father had reached. Bobby Bonds was a three-time National League All-Star who hit 332 career home runs and had a lifetime batting average of .268, whose well-publicized battle with alcoholism played prominently in his son Barry's misdirected vendetta against the press. "Johnny Boy" Soprano was a guy who ran his own crew but never all of New Jersey, who Tony viewed as a saint, glorifying his violence and womanizing while projecting all blame for his childhood scars onto his narcissistic mother Livia. And let's not forget the prominent role uncle figures played in their lives: Tony's uncle Corrado "Junior" Soprano, and legendary Hall of Fame centerfielder Willie Mays, Bonds' literal Godfather.

Both Barry and Tony were husbands and fathers who did what they thought they had to do to provide for their families, who went through the motions of their everyday lives smiling and laughing, forced to hide what must have been a constant fear of the inevitable fall. This manifested itself in Tony's panic attacks, which his therapist Dr. Melfi helped him realize stemmed from a fear of losing his family. Tony once told Melfi that "there are only two endings for a guy like me... dead or in the can," and these outcomes weighed heavily on his subconscious. And if you look back at Bonds' 2006 reality-show, Bonds on Bonds, which chronicled his experience as he approached Hank Aaron's home run record, what you see is a bizarre display of denial, a desperate attempt to influence public opinion that fell flat. This was Bonds, well aware that the Justice Department was in the midst of a three-year long investigation against him, donning a wig and halter-top, dressing up like Paula Abdul to judge the Giants' rookies in an American Idol spoof. It was Bonds more jovial and open than he'd shown himself to be over the entire course of his 22-year career, talking fatalistically about his place in history, and pontificating on modern baseball as crowd-pleasing entertainment, not sacred sport. It was his twisted way of pushing all the uncertainty, doubt and fear out of his mind — it was his version of a panic attack.

Even the sordid details of the Bonds' indictment have a decidedly Mafia feel. There's Bonds' scorned goomah, Kimberly Bell, who testified that she had heard him talk about steroids, had seen him go into a room to inject them and seen the resulting acne on his back. Bonds had once promised to build her a house in Arizona, but ultimately, according to her interviews in the 2006 book Game of Shadows, put her up against a wall with his hand to her throat in an act of steroid-induced rage — a scene eerily reminiscent of when Tony strangled the life out of his Mercedes-selling girlfriend Gloria Trillo. Then there's Greg Anderson, Bonds' childhood friend and former trainer, who refused to testify about the intimate details of Bonds' training regimen and has rotted in a jail cell for over three years, charged with contempt for refusing to roll over on his boss. Tony once lamented that "guys today have no room for the penal experience," but Anderson chose to pay an incredibly high price to respect the code of silence of Bonds' inner-circle. Anderson was released from jail when the indictment came down, but the government is again threatening him with more time should he continue his silence. There's been some speculation that the mysterious "new evidence" that finally led to the indictment may have been Anderson turning government informant, like Sal "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero, Adriana La Cerva and countless other Soprano family associates who talked to the Feds to save them themselves from prison.

If indeed these two men are so similar, then a logical, broader question follows: why does America love Tony Soprano and hate Barry Bonds? It's a complicated issue. A recent ESPN/Seton Hall poll found large racial discrepancies in public attitudes towards the Bonds case. When asked if they thought the government's probe against Bonds' past abuses was unfair, 54.5 percent of blacks responded that it was, compared to only 25.7 percent of whites. Race may play a role in determining whether we see these men as antiheros or antagonists, but it doesn't tell the whole story. While Tony exists in the safe world of fiction, Bonds is trapped in the vicious cycle of our celebrity-obsessed culture that deifies the rich and famous only to tear them down when they falter. We can relate to Tony as a suburban family man straddling two worlds — who walks outside in his bathrobe to get the paper every morning, works the grill at barbeques, and struggles with depression — in a way that we just can't to Bonds, who has no writers scripting his words and actions, and seems to hit all the wrong notes in his appeals for sympathy. He may be deserving of the public's scorn, but Bonds shouldn't be facing 30 years in prison for lying about taking steroids — that would have been a fate far more fitting for our good friend Tony.