Barry Bonds Bryan Stow PSA Video: Watch Former Slugger Stand Up for Stow Family

I'll never claim to be a Barry Bonds fan. I am a Giants fan, but certainly grew tired of his act towards the end of his Giants career. 

But if I am going to make that point, I have to make this one. 

Since his retirement after the 2007 season, Bonds has had his legal issues, but has generally handled things well.

One area where he's consistently been strong over the last year is with Giants fan Bryan Stow, who was attacked outside of Dodger Stadium after Opening Day, nearly lost his life, was in a coma for nearly all of the season and is still hospitalized in rather serious condition.

It's a rather ugly story, but the unity shown since then has been quite inspiring. 

A big part of that unity has been through Bonds, who has been consistently been there for Stow and his family since the attack. He's set up the fund that he talks about in the video and has donated a significant amount of money to it.

The bottom line is that when Bonds' name comes up, plenty of opinions come into the minds of people. He's received a lot of criticism for his attitude and alleged use of performance enhancing drugs, and that's all fair. 

It's fair as long as you tell the whole story. Bonds has been consistently there for a person, family, and to a lesser extent an entire fan base, that really needed the help. 

He'll never be able to make sense of what happened, nobody can. He'll also never be able to go back and erase what happened, it happened. It's horrible, but there's nothing that can be done about it now. 

Well, nothing except do what we all can to help the people who are suffering the most as a result of what happened on Opening Day. From that respect, Bonds has been consistently there and deserves to be commended for it.