The PostGame

Oooookaaaaaay…apparently the Washington Wild Things, a minor league team in the independent Frontier League with a stadium near Pittsburgh, have made an official offer to Barry Bonds for the princely salary of $1,200 per month.

According to ESPN.com’s report on the matter,

There are extras, though: The Wild Things are offering a 50-50 share on merchandise sales and a pledge to find a host family for Bonds so he doesn’t have to rent an apartment in this southwestern Pennsylvania city.

On the road, Bonds would get a king-sized single room, a major perk on the minor-league level.

“Many of the great ones eventually return to where their careers began,” general manager Ross Vecchio said Tuesday. “Babe Ruth began his career with the Red Sox and then finished it with the Boston Braves. Willie Mays started with the New York Giants and finished with the Mets. Hank Aaron began and ended his career in Milwaukee.”

Bonds made about $16 million last season playing for the San Francisco Giants and is up for free agency this winter after the Giants expressed no interest in resigning him. Although he turned 43 in July, the slugger still cranked out 28 home runs and posted a .480 OBP in 2007. He is a mere 65 hits short of 3,000 for his career.

It’s widely expected that, due to his history of knee problems, Bonds will sign with an American League team and live out the rest of his professional career making a comfortable living as a designated hitter.

This offer made me really respect the owner of this random tiny minor league team. It’s like he held up the proverbial middle finger to Bonds and stated, “Even though you’re the all-time home run king, I think you deserve less salary than an average arc-welder.” He must have known that the chances Bonds would come play for him are about the same as the chances of seeing the Aurora Borealis in Cancún at high noon, but, by God, he made the offer anyway.

Obviously Bonds would rather retire than play in the minors. He doesn’t have to resort to selling himself out and humiliating himself for a little extra cash; he isn’t José Canseco.

^ Bonds did have one thing in common with Canseco…hmm…what was it again? Was it rampant illegal steroid use that undermined the foundation of my favorite sport? Yeah, maybe that was it.

Barry Bonds has threatened to boycott the baseball Hall of Fame if they display his record-breaking 756th home run ball with an asterisk attached to it. In case you hadn’t heard, the ball was bought for $752,467 by eccentric fashion designer Mark Ecko, who then allowed fans to decide its fate through his vote756.com website. After 10 million votes, the public had responded by voting for Ecko to donate the ball to Cooperstown after being branded with an asterisk to protest Bonds’s alleged steroid use.

Bonds has called Ecko “an idiot” and discusses his response should the Hall of Fame accept the ball.

“I won’t go. I won’t be part of it,” Bonds said in an interview with MSNBC that aired Thursday night. “You can call me, but I won’t be there….I don’t think you can put an asterisk in the game of baseball, and I don’t think that the Hall of Fame can accept an asterisk,” Bonds said. “You cannot give people the freedom, the right to alter history. You can’t do it. There’s no such thing as an asterisk in baseball.”

Bonds’s new autobiography, “Barry Bonds: If I Did It, Here’s How It Happened“, hits stores next month. The book will depict Bond’s story of how he would have injected himself with illegal performance-enhancing steroids to allow him to break baseball’s most coveted record, if he had taken illegal performance-enhancing steroids in the first place. The introduction is written by Rafael Palmeiro.

I would almost respect Bonds now if he stood up and admitting taking banned substances, but that isn’t going to happen. It’s about as likely as me having an erection after watching Michael Douglas do nude jumping jacks. Because that’s just un-possible.