Not to pick nits, but maybe records prior to 1948 should also be in a different color ink with the notation "no black or dark skinned Latino players allowed"? Or a notation around 1960, when teams set up on the West Coast, and travel fatigue became a bigger issue than the old days when Boston and St. Louis were the furthest geographical points on the MLB map? Then you have the increase from 154 games to 162 games in that same time frame.
And we can't forget the advent of the specialty pitcher in the past 20-30 years. Let's face it, when Ruth hit against a "relief" pitcher, that guy was usually the 9th or 10th best pitcher on the team.
Let's face it, baseball, like all other sports, has had its "golden age", it's "tarnished age" and everything in between. Drug-enhanced muscles aside, Bonds has shown good eyesight and reflexes throughout his career, something I don't believe can improve a lot based on the crap he's been ingesting for the last 10 years.
One need only look at other 'roid boys like McGwire or Canseco to see that WHEN their bat met the ball, it flew like mad, but more often than not, their bat went one way, the ball the other. Bonds, on the other hand, hits for high average and low strikeouts, and has for a long time. A throwback to the mid 20th-century, and a certain Red Sox slugger from the 1940s and 1950s in that respect. I won't put his name in the same comment as Bonds, but you all know who I mean.
I used to agree with you, but not anymore. One of the New York City newspapers had an in-depth series of articles on steroids in baseball last year after the whole Jason Giambi story hit the airwaves right around this time of year. One of the things they pointed out is that some anabolic steroids actually improve (and preserve, as the body ages) a person's visual acuity. This probably explains why Giambi didn't just lose his home run power at the beginning of last year . . . he was also hitting about .170 after the first month of the season.