Barry Bonds: "Is steroids cheating? You want to define cheating in America?"

Lance Armstrong is next in line for non-acknowledgement, isn't he?

His colossal success and unprecedented seven straight Tour de France titles took place in a sports culture where he was the most famous, but far from the only, perpetrator of fraud. In Major League Baseball, we know that the real single-season home run champion is still Roger Maris (not Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa or Barry Bonds) and the true, all-time home run king remains Hank Aaron (not Bonds). Unlike baseball, cycling hasn't aired all its dirty linen yet, but that doesn't excuse Lance.
-- Jordan Schultz in Huffington Post

But the exiled slugger has a point, doesn't he? Corporate America cheats all the time, and politicians like Mitt Romney lie the way I drink beer. Americana is Americana. Why must Bonds bear the brunt of the opprobrium?

'It's Bonds. Barry Bonds': The Return of Baseball's Invisible Man, by Dave Zirin (The Nation)

 ... There is a delight that the baseball cognoscenti takes in making Barry Bonds their “invisible man.” It’s a way to marginalize him without confronting what he represents. He’s a home-run king in exile. He’s the end product of an era where owners made billions selling a steroid-enhanced product. He’s the person who can no longer tell the press to go to hell, because they won’t acknowledge his voice. The press corps once asked Bonds if he thought steroids was cheating. Bonds responded, “Is steroids cheating? You want to define cheating in America? When they make a shirt in Korea for a $1.50 and sell it here for 500 bucks. And you ask me what cheating means?” Now they don’t have to care what he thinks. Now they can humiliate him forever by denying his existence.