the baseball world had one of its biggest weeks in a long time, with alex rodriguez becoming the youngest player to reach 500 homers, tom glavine earning his 300th career victory, and barry bonds tying and breaking hank aaron's 33 yr. old home run record, the record they say is the most hallowed in sports. or hollow, depending on which sportswriter you read.
the controversy surrounding barry bonds, in case you've been under a rock since the turn of the century, is performance enhancing drugs. steroids. regardless of the fact the man has never tested positive for the substance, there is a dark cloud looming over his head because of some disproportionate growth he sustained as he got older, some leaked grand jury testimony, and the fact that his good friend and personal trainer is behind bars for refusal to speak with the feds in the investigation.
it's really all thats talked about when barry's name is mentioned. what seems to be forgotten is how a home run is hit. if you were to believe everything that you read, you'd think steroids make you hit home runs. but they dont.
let's remember what we're dealing with here. a round ball coming at you from 60ft away, at upwards of 100mph, and sometimes as low as 65mph, and sometimes with a curve. you have to hit it with a round bat. round ball, round bat. ball spinning. fast. 60 ft away. we're talking a split second to make multiple decisions and movements.
home runs are achieved by having an incredible sense of hand-eye co-ordination, great timing, patience, and consistent mechanics, with power from your legs and rotation of hips and wrists to generate bat speed. not from having hulking arms and a massive chest and using brute force. but the mechanics of a homerun arent nearly as sexy as saying "wow, look at that monster hit!" - so they get passed over by the writer who never made it past house league, and was usually one of the last 2 to be picked during highschool sports - you know, the kind with an axe to grind.
the thing that makes barry's power numbers so astonishing is the amount of pitches he achieved them with. this is a guy who set and broke records for walks 3 or 4 years running, with a ridiculous total. thats a lot of lost at-bats. he was walked intentionally, he was pitched around... basically, he was given few pitches to hit, and nobody made more out of what they got than barry bonds did. bar none. not only did the home runs increase as he got older, so did the batting average - this isnt a one dimensional show. this is a product of patience, picking your pitches, and making the other guys pay. this is a product of consistency, learning, and wisening with age. this is the most feared hitter of our time, and perhaps all time.
but still, there are people calling for his head, calling for the asterix. i say put the record in the books, but leave the asterix out of it.
baseball is rich with history and lore, its part of its charm, and this is just another chapter in that book. baseball records are meant to be broken and stats are meant to be debated. there was the "dead ball era", the draft era, fewer games, expansion, the 80's, and now the "steroids era". if cheating is having an unfair advantage over another player, than we have to look at who is really cheating, and how it came about.
after the cancellation of the 1994 world series, baseball was in dire straits. they needed to put fans back in the ballpark and start generating some revenue to get the league back on track. this is often looked at as the beginning. along came mcgwire and sosa in '98... the home run chase to break roger maris' record of 61. mcgwire ended up with 70, sosa with 68 (i think? maybe 65), and the league was back in celebratory fashion. there was a little fuss made about mcgwire's incredible hulk like physique (have a look at his 1988 rookie card for a funny comparison), but it was chalked up to creatine and that was that. baseball was back and making money and no one batted an eye.
then barry came along and broke the white man's record (with 73 at age 37!) and all hell broke loose. all of the sudden people wanted to know what was going on and they needed a scapegoat. its not like they didnt already know, but i guess timing is everything, and testing began in 2004. if you were to believe that owners and mlb officials and executives had no clue what was going on for that decade, i would have to guess that you have never spent time in a corporate environment. it's always top down. big brother always knows all. im tired of the naive notion that baseball knew nothing of what was happening under their noses. they saw it. they may have even conspired it. they made their money. and thats why you havent seen any real punishments come down - how hypocritical would that be?!
another question: since testing began, a higher percentage of players who have tested positive for banned/performance enhancing substances are pitchers.. why isnt more of a stink made about that? are relief pitchers not as sexy as home run hitters? clearly.
this is the (north) American mentality of BIGGER, BETTER, ULTIMATE, MAXIMUM, MORE MORE MORE, YEAH YEAH YEAH!!! that we've created and built up to extravagant levels. there's no turning back now.
so, if you're calling for an asterix on this record, i say you're calling for an asterix on every pitch from 1995 - until the first test. because, how could you know who's on what? if the pitcher is juiced, than that pitch is tainted. if the pitcher is not juiced, but players on his team are, than that game is tainted.. and perhaps some of tommy glavine's 300 wins. see what i mean?
this is an era and a record that will fall in with the rest of the lore of baseball and wind up in a big book to be read about and fascinated on by some kid 50 years from now.
but i give this record 8 years, tops.
if A-Rod plays into his 40's, and stays healthy, he could wind up hitting 900. vegas odds on what his controversy will be?
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