8/8/07

Note: I had originally planned to do a post in the political blog this morning, as I wrote I would yesterday. However, Barry Bonds' breaking the home run record is not something that could be ignored. Anything else I tried to write about, Bonds would be the white elephant in the room. So, I'll give you my thoughts on this issue today instead.

Ok, so Barry Bonds is the new Home Run King Of All-Time. Congratulations are in order. Thank you, Barry, for saving the sport of baseball from itself.

Think of this as the Ultimate Sacrifice Bunt. We're sacrificing the two most cherised records in baseball - the single-season home run record and the career home run record - to keep the players from all bulking up until they were practically bursting and all start dying at 37 from brain tumors.

In short, to keep it from becoming wrestling.

You want the next generation's Cal Ripken to suddenly snap one day, kill his whole family, and then hang himself?

I didn't think so.

So, once again, thank you Barry Bonds.

Barry was the only one who could have killed the whole steroids era the way he did. Because Barry Bonds is perhaps the biggest (or at least the most overt) asshole in all of baseball. And this is in a sport where one guy beat up a cameraman for taking his picture!

But Barry reigns supreme. The fans hate him so much, that they are finally going to call baseball out on the steroids issue. As if we didn't know before.

As if all of a sudden, we just "figured out" that everyone was juicing at precisely the same moment when the one guy in the whole world we would least want taking all of baseball's most important records was in the process of doing just that. How convenient that when it was "nice guys" like Mark McGwire or Smilin' Sammy Sosa were out chasing the records, we failed to notice all of the signs that the players were practically sweating testosterone. The signs were there, we just chose to ignore them because we were aught up in all of the fun.

And if it weren't for Bonds, we'd still be ignoring them. We would all be celebrating every home run milestone with the kind of reception such a feat would normally deserve. Rafael Palmeiro would be a hero, on his way to the 3,000 hit/600 home run club. Think he'd be sweating the Hall of Fame, then?

And then, about a decade from now, the players would start dropping like flies. Do you know anybody who was seriously suprised - outside of wrestling fans - when they heard what Chris Benoit had done? Nobody. Because wrestlers have been dying suspicious early deaths at a rate of about 1 a year. This would be baseball in the 21st century, had Barry Bonds not broken the home run record.

Instead, Bud Selig has to clean up the game now; or, at least, he has to look like he's trying. Of course you can't clean up baseball, everyone knows this. As long as there is no test for HGH, it's time to go to town on that. But at least, now the effort is being made. Maybe some of the players will choose not to risk it now that baseball (and Congress) are snooping around.

But how do I feel about the records falling? Well, obviously it is something that is hard to swallow. Hank Aaron has been the home run king for my entire life. 755 has been the number. Now we won't even know what the number is until Bonds retires. It's the end of an era - the Hank Aaron Era.

But, you know what? We attach too much emotional baggage to numbers, as baseball fans. We hold up these records on a pedastal as if they mean anything. Baseball fans, ask yourselves this: Are you upset because Hank Aaron is the greatest power hitter of all-time, and now, because he has the record, Barry Bonds will be?

No, right? I mean, Hank Aaron has never really been considered the best power hitter of all-time; that honor usually goes to either Babe Ruth, Ted Williams, or Josh Gibson. The Babe didn't have as many home runs as Aaron because he spent the first chunk of his career pitching. God knows how many home runs he would have hit if he was in the line-up every night. Ted Williams, well, he definately would have broken Ruth's record and, in all probability, by more than Aaron did, were it not for the fact that he fought in two wars during the prime of his career. And Josh Gibson, well, he doesn't have a single stastic from any game he ever played, because he never played in Major League Baseball.

So, then, isn't Aaron's record tainted? You see what I mean? Every record is set in its own era, amidst its own circumstances. We're all going to know, when it's all said and done, and we're looking at whatever number Bonds ends up with, that he wasn't that kind of home run hitter until his body mysteriously doubled in size, and so then he probably can't be considered the greatest home run hitter of all-time. Just as, for the most part, we all used to accept that Aaron held the home run record, even though we didn't really think he was the best.

And perhaps most importantly of all, this whole episode gives Bud Selig another black eye, and as much as that motherfucker as done to ruin what used to be my favorite league to watch (baseball is still my favorite sport to watch, but I find I enjoy minor-league and college ball much more), that alone is worth it to me. I hope the whole time Selig was going through this, he was thinking to himself, "this is all my fault, I'm such a stupid asshole." I know he's not, because he's probably so stupid he thinks he's always right (Selig for President?), but at least now maybe everyone else will realize what an asshole he is and how he has to go. He can't appoint himself commisioner for life and barricade himself in his office if everyone else connected to the sport wants him to go, can he?

I hope you enjoy this mess you made, asshole. Ain't karma a bitch?