Posted on 05/28/2006 6:01:06 PM PDT by Pokey78
Barry Bonds was in Milwaukee recently and the commissioner of baseball wouldn’t make the 10-minute drive from his house to watch him. So it follows that Bud Selig wasn’t in when Bonds moved past Babe Ruth on the home run list.
Nor were any of Ruth’s children. Nor any high-level officials. Nor anybody whose presence screamed, “I’m important, so I’m here.”
Barry Bonds hit his 715th home run Sunday. But every overblown ESPN news break-in couldn’t drown out the sad reality of the moment. It was as awkward as it was historical. Some wanted to watch. Most wanted to cover their eyes.
This wasn’t a player punctuating greatness. This was the most vilified sports star we’ve ever seen affirming his place among the five darkest moments in baseball history.
Count them. Like plagues:
1. Eight members of the Chicago White Sox are banned for conspiring to throw the 1919 World Series.
2. Pete Rose, the game’s greatest hitter, agrees to a lifetime ban for betting — on baseball.
3. Baseball cancels the 1994 World Series, not because of natural disaster but rather mutant labor negotiators.
4. Congress holds steroid hearings. Among the Murderers Row giving testimony: Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Rafael Palmeiro and Jose Canseco — who ironically turns out to be baseball’s shining light.
5. Bonds passes the great Ruth and closes in on the great Hank Aaron. But he’s the poster child of the steroid era, and his baggage and personality have led him to become the sport’s greatest pox instead of ambassador.
This is a sport that embraces its heroes and statistical achievements. Numbers are dipped in gold. 56. 61. .400. 714. 755.
Now here comes a man who puts up incredible numbers and few outside of San Francisco want to celebrate. Selig said weeks ago he wouldn’t show up for 715. Hold the pomp, shelve the circumstance. Selig would close his eyes and pretend it didn’t happen. There’s an old country-western tune that applies here: “If the phone don’t ring, you know it’s me.”
The NFL had a vested interest in helping reshape Ray Lewis’ image after his Atlanta murder trial. The NBA needed Kobe Bryant to be a smiling pitchman again after rape charges were dropped.
Baseball isn’t moving to resuscitate Bonds. His image couldn’t be saved by “House.” He is impossible to like. A fan catches a home run ball. Bonds refuses a request to sign the ball but asks the fan to sign a release so he could use his likeness on his TV show. This is the sport’s ambassador?
Frogs, locusts, diseased cattle.
Gambling, strikes, steroids.
It’s all relative.
Embarrassment: The “Black” Sox scandal is still debated 87 years later. It has kept “Shoeless” Joe Jackson out of the Hall of Fame. Rose was never accused of throwing a game. He just gutted its integrity by betting and lying about it. The all-time hits leader was thrown out and isn’t in the Hall.
Embarrassment: Fans have learned to hate two words: collective bargaining. But nothing in the long, inglorious history of labor woes equals the cancellation of the 1994 World Series. Owners and players couldn’t figure out how to divide millions.
Embarrassment: Steroids have tainted this entire era of players. Bonds just happens to be the leader in the pharmacy. For baseball to strip him or any player of their statistics is nonsensical. What of the steroid-using pitchers Bonds homered off of? Do two druggies cancel each other out? How to determine which homers were drug-aided and which weren’t? It’s a futile exercise. But we know what steroids have done to the record book. Not players. Steroids.
Bonds says he doesn’t care what people say or think. If that were true, he wouldn’t be trying to reshape his image on TV. ESPN was only too happy to sell itself out, giving Bonds a time slot and a blank script for a weekly 30-minute soliloquy called, “Bonds on Bonds.”
My wife and I watched the other night. There was tape of Philadelphia fans booing Bonds as he stepped to the plate.
“Why are they booing him?” my wife asked. “There’s steroids in hot dogs and Babe Ruth ate those.”
My wife. Funny girl.
Bonds juiced because he was jealous. Relying on interviews, documents and grand jury testimony in the book, “Game of Shadows,” authors alleged that Bonds decided to turn to muscle drugs after witnessing the attention paid to the McGwire-Sosa home run chase in 1998.
Follow the growth. Bonds averaged 31.8 home runs from 1986 to 1999. He averaged 51.6 from 2000 to 2004, including 73 in 2001. He hit one home run every 16 at-bats in his first 14 seasons. He hit one every eight at-bats in his next five.
I know. Good hot dogs.
History views Ruth as a home run hitter. Bonds will be viewed as something far less. A lab creation.
If Pujols manages to pass them, good for him, as long as he does it legitimately (and I have no reason to suspect him).
Ted Williams is credited with asserting that a lifetime ban should be a lifetime ban. So, Joe Jackson should be in and so should Rose, when he goes to the great head-freezer in the sky.
Of all the baseball players who have been accused of hurting the game, I think Bonds is the worst. As other posters have noted, he was a great, great player --
And then he went and started cheating anyway.
I have no respect for him. He cheapens the game, and he'd stink up the HOF.
He's not going to pass Aaron, he's got warning track power this year, took him two weeks to get two home runs. He's old, he's sore, he's losing his edge, and nobody really likes him. He'll finish out this year in the 720s and retire.
Jackson should be in because there is no proof whatsover that he did anything wrong.
I go back and forth on Rose, but I think he deserved to be in because of his playing. The betting was wrong, but there is no evidence that it had any effect on baseball.
Until there is a blood test done for HGH, we can only assume that a player is clean. We do now that are many players who have used in the 90's and early 00's who never got caught, and certainly many who are using HGH now without fear of detection.
Steroids may have helped him hit harder and farther, but he still has to see and hit the ball. Steroids won't help that.
Personally I think it's ridiculous for him to be vilified for something that was acceptable at the time he used it. Should today's players with their whirlpools and cortizone injections and specialized training and doctors, protein pills and vitamins be considered "cheaters" compared to the old days when the players had a tougher life and not much money?
I think he is probably off the juice this year and it's showing. And I agree, he will probably retire at the end of the season and hold his breath praying that proof doesn't come out about the steroids.
Of course, Barry Bonds supposedly took steroids. Ray Lewis left two people dead. Guess who gets booed.
I listened to Tom Seaver, a Cincinnati Red at the end of his career, comment on Pete Rose. Seaver was asked: "Should Rose be in the Hall of Fame?"
Seaver gave a very simple answer: "No," he said. When asked why, he replied, "Baseball is a game of rules. Rose broke the rules."
Cincinnati idolizes Rose, but it has great respect for Seaver. It is also used to hedging around the topic of Rose. Seaver didn't hedge one bit.
I wish someone would ask him about Bonds. (If they did, I missed it.)
Tom Seaver for Baseball Commissioner!
What's the big deal? Babe Ruth isn't the homerun king.
Hank Aaron has had that record since April 8, 1974.
When Bonds breaks 755 then they'll have a reason to bitch.
The Apocalypse must be near.
Selig should go too. He has allowed this to happen simply to boost revenues and as such he is just as guilty as the players.
I agree. Especially given that the HOF judgement should be on Rose's playing career, not what he did after he became a manager.
The game itself is so boring ([1] Homer's comment when he went on the wagon in one of the early episodes: "I never realized baseball was so boring", [2] Evidently the 715 ball fell into the lap of some doofus who wasn't watching the game - he was in line for a beer), we have to attach significance to records which owe more to arithemetic than to performance at any given moment, like, say, track and field records. It's all in our heads now, and not on the field.
Bonds, the SHAMBINO
But nothing in the long, inglorious history of labor woes equals the cancellation of the 1994 World Series.
I dunno, the NHL cancelled their entire season.
Barry Bonds didn't break any record recently, that I know of. They're not going to hold a ceremony for the next guy (if any) to break Lou Brock's record.
I do not follow base ball, but cannot avoid hearing all the hype (tripe?).
Some one who actually knows and cares please answer this question.
Did "The Babe" play as many games as the modern pro's?
If Bonds and crew play a lot more often, particularly while "in their prime", there is no legitimate comparison of home runs on that basis alone.
That is, not even counting the drugs modern day and night players abuse.
As to the drugs, so far as I am concerned they render the modern players scores irrelevant for comparison to the natural players of the past.
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