Using NewsHour Extra Feature Stories

Overview: NewsHour Extra features stories can help students identify and interpret key issues in current events. This activity anticipates one class period, but the follow-up essay might be assigned as homework, or in another period.

Warm Up: Use initiating questions to introduce the topic and find out how much your students know.

Main Activity: Have students read NewsHour Extra's feature story and answer the questions on the reading comprehension handout.

Discussion: Use discussion questions to encourage students to think about how the issues outlined in the story affect their lives and express and debate different opinions.

Follow-up: Students can write an 500-word editorial on the topic expressing their views and send it to NewsHour Extra [extra@newshour.org] for possible publication.

Evaluation: Students are graded on their answers to reading comprehension questions and/or their editorial.

Story: Baseball Player Bonds Nears Historic Mark: 05/24/06
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/extra/features/jan-june06/bonds_5-24.html

Initiating Questions:

1. Who is Barry Bonds?

2. Who are Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron?

3. What do you know about the steroid scandal in baseball?

Reading Comprehension Questions: (click here for printout)

1. Who is Barry Bonds and why is he in the news right now?

San Francisco Giants outfielder Barry Bonds is on the verge of surpassing baseball legend Babe Ruth for second on the career home runs list.

2. How would you describe Bonds' career? What are some of his milestones?

Statistically, Bonds is undoubtedly one of the greatest players of all time. His 73 home runs in 2001 are a single-season record. Bonds also is the only player to have 500 home runs and 500 stolen bases in a career.

On May 20, he hit his 714th home run, matching Babe Ruth's total and placing him behind only Hank Aaron's 755.

3. What is marring Bonds' achievements?

However, along with several of his fellow players, Bonds is suspected of using illegal steroids.

"There is no other conclusion you can draw from the evidence that we laid out in our book but that he knowingly used drugs from '99 through the 2003 season," said Lance Williams, co-author of a book called "Game of Shadows" that chronicled Bonds' alleged use of steroids, on the April 3 NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.

4. Why haven't other alleged steroid users attracting the same attention as Bonds?

Other alleged steroid users, such as Rafael Palmeiro, Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire, have retired and faded out of the public eye. But Bonds keeps hitting home runs and attracting negative attention.

5. What negative reactions has Barry Bonds received?

When Bonds leaves the friendly confines of AT&T Park in San Francisco, he is often booed and heckled by angry fans. In April, a baseball fan in San Diego threw a plastic syringe at Bonds.

Even some of his fellow players have spoken out against Bonds.
Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Corey Lidle openly questioned the legitimacy of Bonds' home run total.

"Basically, he had decisions to make," Lidle told the Philadelphia Daily News. "There are consequences in every decision. He's a grown-up. He's got to live with those consequences."

6. What do Bonds' defenders have to say about the reaction Bonds is receiving?

There also have been allegations that the negative reaction to Bonds' success is driven by racism. The situation has been compared to that of Hank Aaron, also an African American, who received death threats when he surpassed Ruth in 1974.

"White America doesn't want him to [pass] Babe Ruth and is doing everything they can to stop him," Leonard Moore, director of African and African-American studies at Louisiana State University told USA Today in March. "Once Bonds passes Ruth, there's nothing that will make [Ruth] unique and they're scared. And I'm scared for Bonds."

Minnesota Twins outfielder Torii Hunter echoed these allegations. "He has never failed a drug test and said he never took steroids, but everybody keeps trying to disgrace him," Hunter told USA Today.

"How come nobody even talks about Mark McGwire anymore? Or [Rafael] Palmeiro? Whenever I go home, I hear people say all of the time, 'Baseball just doesn't like black people.'"

Discussion Questions and Extension Activity (more research might be needed):

1. Research the details concerning Barry Bonds' involvement in the steroid scandal in baseball. What do you think? Is Bonds being unfairly treated? Why or why not?

2. According to the article, some say this situation is the same as that faced by Hank Aaron, another African American baseball player who surpassed Babe Ruth in 1974. How are the situations similar? What changes have occurred in the past three decades? Do you think the comparison is a good one? Why or why not?

3. Should fans care if Barry Bonds and other professional players use steroids or not? Explain your reasoning.

Send your answers, in essay form, to extra@newshour.org for possible publication!