"Throw at his head! Throw at his head!"

The egg-shaped man in Milwaukee's Miller Park, who looked like he would be sitting behind a desk by morning, continued the arrhythmic chant as those around him chimed in. They were all pleading to see a 95-mph fastball hit a man in the temple, and felt that their demand was righteous. The player they wanted to see put down was, of course, San Francisco baseball star Barry Bonds, and it is hard to say what was more shocking: the call for his beheading or the near-collective rapture at the thought. One guy yelled, "Hit his knee! End his career! Please! I will name my kid after you!"

The towering African American intellectual W.E.B. DuBois attempted to analyze exactly why Johnson was the repository for so many rivers of revulsion. His words hold an almost humbling contemporary echo:

"Why then this thrill of national disgust? Because Johnson is Black. Of course some pretend to object to Mr. Johnson's character. But we have yet to hear, in the case of white America, that marital troubles have disqualified prize fighters or ballplayers or even statesmen. It comes down, then, after all, to this unforgivable blackness."