posted 2007/08/07 at 15:22
Barry Bonds' HR Record Tainted by Elbow 'Armor'? (Editor and Publisher)
I can't say that I haven't been following Bonds' chase for the Major League Baseball home run record, but I haven't exactly been ignoring it either. This is probably because I can't sort out my opinion of Bonds; there's little doubt in my mind that he used steroids for at least part of his career, and he's certainly shown himself to be somewhat of a jerk off of the field. There's still some part of me that wants to like him, though, and I can't tie that feeling to anything, really. (I actually had a nightmare a few weeks ago involving Bonds and Mark McGwire, although the nightmare was more about me trying to sort out my feelings about the Benoit tragedy than anything to do with baseball.) As a result, I hadn't exactly been keeping close tabs on Giants games for the past few days or so, but after reading about Bonds tying the record online, I have kind of made a point of catching ESPN2's coverage of the games.
This article about the equipment Bonds wears, along with Keith Olbermann's recent coverage of Bonds' chase (most notably his excellent piece on last night's Countdown about the other "asterisk records" in baseball) just makes you think all the more, though. Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth's record before I was born, and in my lifetime only Cal Ripken Jr. breaking the consecutive games played record and McGwire breaking the single-season home run record seemed to generate as much press. In both those cases, though, I think the press was perhaps a bit exacerbated by Major League Baseball basically looking for some good story to follow after the 1994 lockout and cancellation of the World Series left a bad taste in sports fans' mouths. If anything, Major League Baseball seems to be pushing attention away from Bonds' chase, albeit for good reason.
Still, I think there are a couple of things that aren't being considered by people as much as they should be. First of all, not to take anything away from Aaron or Bonds, but limiting home run records to Major League Baseball tallies is, I feel, kind of elitist. Even if you just want to look at baseball in America and throw out Oh Sadaharu's 868 home runs in Japan, Josh Gibson hit somewhere in the neighbourhood of 800 home runs during his years in the Negro Leagues. However, as always, Major League Baseball still has something stuck in its craw about the Negro Leagues (witness the travesty surrounding Buck O'Neil's non-induction into Cooperstown), and so it is exceedingly rare, even as many people seem to be looking for ways to diminish what Bonds is about to accomplish, for people to bring up Gibson's record.
The other thing to keep in mind is that for all that baseball likes to romanticize itself as part of the great, pure American tradition -- something that I will admit to sometimes doing quite deliberately when defending baseball against others -- baseball still has had a long and checkered past, from small things like spitballs and corked bats to the widespread corruption that led to things like the Black Sox scandal. I wouldn't dare to suggest that Hank Aaron used any illicit means to achieve his home run record, but as much as those of us who love baseball hate to admit it, there is a certain baseline of corruption in the sport that has held true for its lifetime. Perhaps Bonds' increased head and foot sizes are a more obvious indicator of what has gone on in this generation's baseball than anything we saw before, but trying to romanticize that there was a time when baseball was clean and pure is, for lack of a kinder word, foolish. I mean, sports medicine -- the legal kind -- improved at least tenfold between when Lou Gehrig set his consecutive games record and when Ripken broke it. Gehrig's streak couldn't have continued because of his ALS, but who's to say that other players in that span couldn't have broken the record if they'd had access to the kinds of (legal) treatments and medicines and equipment that Ripken had access to throughout his career? The fact is, if you look hard enough, pretty much any sports record has countless reasons why it should have an asterisk beside it. Bonds just happens to be, like everyone else, a player of his time, and unfortunately his just happened to be the steroid era. This isn't to excuse his behaviour, but I think it does need to be put into better perspective than others have been doing.
I hope that I will be watching when Bonds breaks the record sometime in the next few days. I say this not as a fan of Bonds or a fan of baseball, but just as someone who wants to witness the history myself. (I was watching The Screen Savers on ZDTV when McGwire hit his 62nd home run that one season.) Perhaps this will all become moot if Alex Rodriguez breaks the record himself in a few years (which I suspect he will), but if nothing else, even if you don't care much for baseball, you have to admit that this makes for an interesting spectacle.
Hi Sean. Long time reader, first time poster. Two things:
1. It's the MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL home run record--Not Japan's, not the Negro league's--Major League Baseball. It's not elitist to exclude home run totals from other leagues; in fact, it would make no sense, by definition, to include them.
2. Major League Baseball has nothing to do with who does and does not get elected to the Hall of Fame. That's chosen by the Baseball Writers' Association of America, which is simply a group of sportswriters independent of MLB. Blame them, not MLB for Buck O'Neill or any other Negro League player's lack of induction into the Hall.
copyright © 2008 Sean Shannon