As baseball fans heatedly debate the merits of Barry Bonds’ inevitable ascendance to career home run king, a different controversy surfaced yesterday when the asterisk, the star-like typographical symbol expected by many to appear alongside Bonds’ place in the record books to denote the slugger’s steroid use, announced that it wanted “no part” of Bonds’ record. In the shocking announcement, a visibly testy asterisk said the association with the slugger’s tarnished image would sully its “storied reputation” and perhaps impact its ability to find meaningful work in the future.

“I usually try to stay out of controversy, but Barry Bonds is a pompous, narcissistic fool,” said the asterisk. “I’m drawing the line. It’s time some other punctuation marks start to carry some of this dirty water. In fact, I’ll call out the question mark. Why don’t we put the very symbol of uncertainty, doubt and improbability alongside Mr. Bonds’ skid mark in the record book? WHY IS IT ALWAYS THE ASTERISK?”

The question mark was unavailable for comment. A phone call to its home was answered by the semi-colon, who said the question mark was attending a seminar on the proper use of conjunctive adverbs with the apostrophe and the ellipsis. But the semi-colon offered some insight into the debate.

“Look, the asterisk has a point; we all need to take a good look at this,” he said. “I, for one, thought this might be a great opportunity for the ampersand to step up and recover from the Hall & Oates tragedy. But it might just be that the horrid responsibility of having linked the two guys who wrote the song Maneater is too much to overcome.”

Update:  A representative for the period told our sources that a blockbuster deal with the asterisk was scuttled this morning.  Details are sketchy, but the period had offered to assume responsibility for Bonds’ record in exchange for being relieved of its responsibility as the shorthand expression for a woman’s menstrual cycle.  The deal imploded when the National Organization for Women threatened to abandon all punctuation usage entirely if women were forced to say, “Oh crap, I just got my asterisk.”

Update 2:  The umlaut ¨ reportedly offered its services to the asterisk without condition but was turned down for being “too French, even for Barry Bonds.”  When the asterisk was told that the umlaut appears in several other European languages, it responded, “Oh, no, does this mean that they won’t like us?  Cause I’m really worried about pissing off the Europeans right now, when my entire existence is about to be associated with a guy who looks like an over-cooked Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man.  Really.  Let me check the old asterisk-priority list pronto, cause heaven forbid we PISS OFF THE EUROPEANS, THE FOLKS WHO BROUGHT US THE GODFORSAKEN TILDE (~),  BASICALLY A WANDERING, SPINELESS DASH THAT MEANS YOU SHOULD SAY “NYAH.” 

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