ESPN did another one of its famous surveys, but for once they went a little further in their analysis than they usually do.

The latest one concerns Barry Bonds chase for the title of home run king of baseball, as he's within 12 homers at the time I'm writing this of Hank Aaron. Now, I'm going to preface this post with some things that I just want to get out there. Barry Bonds is my second favorite baseball player of all time. The first is Roberto Clemente. I became a fan of Barry Bonds back when he played for the Pittsburgh Pirates, and my being a fan of his and extolling his virtues as a baseball player has never changed, even through what are still the unproven allegations of steroid use. Personally, I could care less whether he used to use steroids or not, though I don't support them, because they weren't illegal in the game during the time he was supposed to have possibly used them.

Anyway, the latest poll shows that 52% of baseball fans hope he doesn't break the record; like that's going to happen. It's also not unexpected; after all Barry Bonds has received lots of bad press over the years, and many had already sided against him way before he even got close to the record.

What was interesting, though, were the numbers when they compared these thoughts based on race. As with the situation when O. J. Simpson was going through his tribulations back in the 90's, 46% of blacks think he's been treated unfairly, as opposed to 25% of whites. Another interesting statistic says that 85% of blacks feel that Bonds should be in the Hall of Fame as opposed to 53% of whites. Oh yes, and one more statistic is interesting; 25% of the black voters felt Bonds was treated unfairly because of race; 0% of whites thought that.

Even though some of the directions of the voters were on the same path, the gap between the numbers is still staggering. ESPN admitted that they had to go out of their way to find black voters for their poll, which is unusual for pollsters who are usually looking at pure numbers, so it almost smacks of their having a mission. Still, one has to acknowledge that there are still major differences in perception when the races see someone of color as a potential target of others.

As it pertains to Barry Bonds, he doesn't care one way or another. There's no doubt in my mind that he'll have caught Hank Aaron by the All Star Game; the question is whether he'll play one more season and reach 800. As it pertains to race, another study has just shown that there is a gulf in perception between how people feel and perceive events in general. It's not necessarily surprising that only 25% of blacks thought Barry was being treated unfairly because of race; it's disappointing that not one white person thought race had anything to do with it.

And that's a perception that I work hard to bring to people's attention time and time again, because, unfortunately, it's there; really, it is.