It is hard to feel sorry for professional athletes.

The average Joe doesn’t sympathize with the gripes and complaints of millionaires – people who have spent their lives playing games and yet have more money than they know what to do with.

So I don’t know how Barry Bonds of all people can expect his sad story to make anyone feel sorry for him.

Actually, it is to the delight of baseball fans everywhere that Bonds appears to be miserable.

During the past few months, he has cried on national television. He said before the beginning of this season that baseball wasn’t fun anymore. Recently, he said he spends almost all of his free time sleeping because of the pain he is suffering and the stress of the season.

In some ways, it is getting ridiculous for Barry: A few weeks ago, he was hit in the head with a foul ball during batting practice.

Bonds seems to be paying penance for his transgressions. He is disliked by the public for both his personality and his believed wrong-doings.

Positioned to surpass Babe Ruth on baseball’s all-time home run list, Bonds is struggling just to run the bases. At 41 years old, his body is giving out – his knee is shot – and his window of opportunity to chase Hank Aaron appears to have already passed.

He has said he will retire at the end of the 2006 season, and he looks to no longer have the capability to hit the 32 home runs needed to pass Aaron in the remaining months.

It may be the justice of baseball gods, but this once proud man has been cruelly humbled.

On the road, he is booed because the opinion of the baseball world is that Bonds, while breaking records, also broke the rules and took performance-enhancing drugs.

At the start of his major league career, he was a wiry base-stealer, but during the past 20 years Bonds became the hulking power-hitter that made the game look easy.

And there has never been a hitter like him. He hit 73 home runs in one season.

He was so good that pitchers even conceded defeat in almost a third of Bonds’ at-bats in his last full season, intentionally walking him 120 times.

Even now, with his batting average dipping and his body deteriorating, some managers still respect Bonds enough to continue to walk him.

It is a growing opinion that Bonds won’t even complete the rest of this season, and if he does turn it in early, I couldn’t blame him.

Bonds is just a shell of the player he once was, and seems to be suffering as a person.

But considering the man has millions in the bank and records in the books that won’t be taken away from him – no matter if we find out he took steroids or not – excuse me if I don’t feel sorry for him.

He has always been self-centered and doesn’t appear to have changed.

But unfortunately for Bonds, as he sets his last records there is less and less for his swollen head to be proud of. With every at-bat, it’s obvious that his reign as the game’s best player and his career in baseball are almost over.

Apparently, cheaters may prosper, but only for so long.

– Luke Plansky is a sophomore in pre-journalism and mass communication. He is a Daily staff writer.