Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Barry?

Chuck Klosterman, for one.

What aggravates me about articles like these is that they exalt the myth of baseball to the complete detriment of the actual game. As I've said before, no sport has as ridiculously high a standard of purity to meet in the press as does baseball; the scribes who cover it pounce on any show of human weakness from its stars, demanding instead a cardboard myth of all-american heroes and scrappy hustlers. All sorts of things are whitewashed in the service of this myth, like segregation and the gambling scandals of the teens, but in spite of this for some people the myth is still all that matters.

Klosterman even admits as much at the end, quoting an article about Bonds from 2002 to make his point:

"But for the moment, as the crowd settled back into its seats, there were no heroes or demons," Grann wrote while awaiting Bonds' next at-bat, back when his home run total still hovered below 600. "Just baseball. Isn't that enough?"

To which Klosterman, supremely confident that we'll all agree with him, answers "No."

Really? Baseball's not enough for you, sport? Your precious sensibilities demand heroes and demons, tragedy and redemption, a metaphor for The Way We Live Now? Then go and read a book, for Christ's sake, and leave the game to those of us who love it for what it, not for what we pretend it once was.