Gary Shelton of the St. Petersburg Times writes about the potential baggage the Rays would have to deal with if they sign Barry Bonds.
Over the years, the Rays’ clubhouse has been a bad place, an awful place, for a young ballplayer to work. It has been a place where apathy devoured ability, where some veterans scoffed at enthusiasm and effort. Only now has it been scrubbed clean of the sour influences.
So it’s a good idea to thrust the Godzilla of sour influences into the room?
In any discussions – even the informal, internal discussions that teams have about every available free agent – there are a few questions that have to be answered about Bonds.
What would he mean to the clubhouse? Odds are, it wouldn’t be good.
At this point in his career, doesn’t the bad outweigh the good with Barry? For the 25-plus home runs that he’s going to hit, is it worth it to soil the clubhouse? The Giants are going to be awful – maybe the worst in baseball even. But read the articles coming out of San Fran so far in spring training; all the players are ecstatic because they’re not walking on eggshells anymore.
