MLB: Day One Hundred and Ten
Posted on | July 23, 2007 | No Comments
On Thursday Barry Bonds got a couple steps closer to tying and eventually breaking Hank Aaron’s all-time homerun record. Bonds went deep not once but twice in his San Francisco Giants 9-8 loss to the Chicago Cubs. And now he is just two homers away from tying the record and three homers from breaking the record.
I haven’t written too much about Bonds and this record mainly because I really didn’t know how I felt about it. I like seeing records fall (usually) but I don’t want cheating to ever be involved in any type of record or game. And I’m afraid this time there has been a whole lot of cheating going on.
Just look at Bonds. He went from being a scrawny soon-to-be-Hall-of –Famer who could hit the ball hard and run the bases fast. But he wasn’t all that great a homerun hitter. When he was younger (and pre-steroids) he was probably on pace to hit about 500 homeruns in his career. That would have been great. But it must not have been good enough for Bonds.
Through the years Bonds’s muscles grew, as did his hat size, and as did his homerun numbers. So too did the accusations of him taking several different types of performance enhancing drugs. And now here he is about to break the record of one of the all-time great hitters in baseball history.
Is it right that a cheater will break the record? Absoluely not.
It’s even worse that it’s a record held by a great man – Hank Aaron – and a record that was held by a greater player – Babe Ruth – before Aaron broke the record.
It’s a shame actually.
And don’t tell me that steroids don’t help a man hit a ball. I know. But it does help that man hit the ball farther. How many times have we all watched a game and witnessed a smaller player hit the ball right on the screws and the ball was caught at the warning track. Well, if that player had a little more strength then that flyout would’ve been a homer.
And that’s what Bonds has done. He’s turned numerous flyouts into homers. Perhaps someone should go back and watch every one of his homers and see how many of them only cleared the wall by twenty or thirty feet. Not that it would do any good. There’s no gauging just how much more distance steroids has given Bonds.
In the end, when that record falls (and I still hope somehow it doesn’t) we all lose – even Bonds himself. Because people will hate him even more when the truth comes out. And the truth will come out eventually. And then what will happen? Will we take the record away or will we have a homerun fa-king.
Well, eventhough I don’t like A-Rod, I may become his biggest fan. So come on A-Rod. Keeping hitting those dingers!
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