An American Lion

Barry Bonds(notes), 45, has not filed retirement papers, despite not having played in two seasons. Why not? “Because he’s not retired,” said Bonds’ agent, Jeff Borris. “He was run out of the game.”

I find it remarkable that Barry Bonds has simply vanished from baseball, vanished from the public consciousness, gone down the rabbit hole, in other words. Oh, sure—he has legal issues. He’s here. But he’s not really here anymore, is he? In light of the scandal surrounding him, that’s probably a relief for him as a person, not so much as a player who is one more season away from getting to 3,000 hits and breaking a few more records, notably, Rickey Henderson’s record for runs.

In general, though, you would think that he would be omnipresent, and a part of the sports discussion and a part of what’s going on in baseball. Instead, baseball acts like there was no Barry Bonds, like he didn’t break the home run record, and that his absence from the discussion is a good thing.

In previous years, you couldn’t go a single day without a mention of Barry Bonds. Now? Nothing.

UPDATE: No kidding. The day after I put this up, you have this story on the wires:

Bar ry Bonds still has yet to formally retire from baseball. But the career of the major leagues’ reigning home run king is over, his agent says, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

 

Bonds has insisted he won’t retire, leaving open the possibility that he might yet catch on with another team. But that hasn’t happened, and his agent doubts that it ever will, according to the report.

“It’s two years since he played his last game, and if there was any chance he’d be back in a major-league uniform, it would have happened by now,” his agent, Jeff Borris, said Wednesday, according to the report.

Coincidence?