Future Tense

Barry Bonds Finally Admits to Glassing

Barry Bonds, Major League Baseball’s all-time home run record holder, has publicly admitted using Google Glass. A photo posted to Bonds’ Instagram account illustrates the controversial practice in vivid detail, putting an end to public speculation as to whether the retired outfielder has been using wearables. As if that wasn’t enough, he even spells it out in the photo’s caption: “I’m Glassing.”

In the photo, Bonds enjoys a coffee on a balcony while gazing out toward the horizon. (Or perhaps he is gazing into the device on his face? Who knows?!) As if to hammer the final nail into the coffin of pre-tech takeover San Francisco, he caps it off with the hashtag #Onlyinthebay.

The #glassing trend is the brainchild of designer Anthony Phills, and is not sponsored by Google. In an interview with Slate, Phills explained that he wanted to make the technology “a bit more personal.” Phills says he has worked with Bonds on projects in the past, and is currently testing a prototype of a Glass application that would document and authenticate athletic memorabilia as it is signed.

What better figure to put a human face on the oft-maligned wearables that than Barry Bonds? His April 2011 conviction on one count of obstruction of justice was upheld in September 2013, but a federal appeals court is now weighing whether to overturn that felony verdict. Bonds was never convicted of any charges relating to the use of performance-enhancing drugs, but is still tainted by his association with steroids. If only Glass had existed in time to record his past interactions with trainer Greg Anderson, who was jailed for refusing to testify in Bonds’ trial, perhaps legacy-crippling scandal could’ve been avoided.

At the very least, the photo confirms that Google Glass frames can fit big-headed people, too. The cranially gifted among us needn’t worry about the pinching and poking that comes along with ill-fitting dumb-glasses. Thanks, Barry!