A co-worker is slowly dying inside. He is a lifelong New York Yankees fan. Through the good and the bad. The ups and the downs. The ones that you grudgingly respect even as you mock them after the team flamed out in early October again. The reason for his pain, the New York Yankees are thinking of bringing back Barry Bonds.
Hank Steinbrenner is said to have taken a major part or even the lead in discussions among club higherups about Bonds on Thursday, laying out the ramifications of a Bonds singing in terms of the clubhouse, the potential circus, the perception of a signing and branding aspects, all important issues to baseball’s most storied franchise.
He says that he will toss away a lifetime of cheering the Yankees and find a new team if the Yankees do sign him. Of course he does have Brian Cashman on his side.
So when Cashman was asked on Friday if he had talked with Jeff Borris, the agent for Barry Bonds, he quickly amended his instinctive response.
“I wouldn’t say,” Cashman said, before waiting a moment and answering definitively. “I have not. I don’t want to take this down the wrong path.”
I am no fan of Barry Bonds but I do have a soft spot of the New York Yankees (partly because of Joe Torre and Brian Cashman) but after all of the damage Barry Bonds did to the game of baseball, I find it hard to believe that the Yankees would bring him back. An aging, slowing, moody, out of shape slugger who is a horrible teammate. That sounds like the kind of player that Tampa Bay used to sign, not the New York Yankees.
