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Barry Bonds Anti-Racism Tweet: Reclusive Ex-Star Changing His Image?

By Dustin Kemp
Published on: 15:44 PST, May 18, 2016

TMZ was the first source to report that Barry Bonds, former MLB megastar, recently saw an online video of students from his daughter’s expensive private school using racial slurs and proceeded to unleash a furious comment on Twitter. What makes the incident especially noteworthy, however, is that Bonds has remained almost completely silent since he left the San Francisco Giants in 2007. Could this small outburst be the beginning of something bigger for Barry Bonds?

Warning: The following video contains A$AP Ferg lyrics that might be disturbing and offensive to some viewers.

Once the video, which depicts the Brentwood school students and administration as racists, went viral, Barry Bonds caught on quickly and was appalled by the disgusting values being displayed by his daughter’s classmates. He took to Twitter to voice his outrage.

“I am sad that i had to see this at my daughters school. #Racism #Fixit #Suspension,” Bonds said.

Not exactly a Kanye West-level rant. Again, though, any kind of public expression from Bonds is significant, as he has been trying very hard to avoid any public attention since he stopped playing baseball. Barry is now serving as head hitting coach for the Miami Marlins, but he has remained a veritable hermit while doing so, as far as the media are concerned.

Even in the later years of his career when he starred in his short-lived autobiographical reality show, Bonds on Bonds, Highbeam called Barry “one of the most private and prickly giants of pro sports.”

Since then, Barry Bonds has been included in several legal affairs concerning his alleged steroid use, but other than that has remained pretty much 100 percent reclusive.

But when it comes to his daughter’s education, which Daily News reports is costing Bonds $37,725 a year, he is apparently willing to make an exception.

Barry is not the only member of the Bonds family taking a stand against the students’ poor reflection on the school, either. Elizabeth Bonds, who is no longer married to Barry but is the mother of his daughter, also chimed in, blaming not the students but their guardians.

“Is this what $40k worth of private education gets you? I am extremely embarrassed that my daughter is a current junior at this school and has been here since kindergarten. I can’t even speak. I blame the parents of these children. SMH.”

A student at the school, who wished to remain anonymous, agreed that the students were not to blame, but he said neither were the parents. After all, he explained, they were simply singing along to a song.

“It’s a small segment of the school that is making a big fuss over nothing… Some of the extreme activists on campus are calling singing along to a rap song a ‘hate crime’ or ‘hate speech’ but that is a load of hogwash.”

The fact that Barry Bonds seized on such an incident and made a virtually unheard of public statement, however small it may have been, suggests that maybe he is softening his stance on never even flirting with public exposure.

Could we be seeing the first step of a Barry Bonds who has finally decided to come out of his shell and be a member of society, and possibly even pop culture, again?

[Photo by Luis M. Alvarez/AP Images]

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