Let's get this straight: I can't stand Barry Bonds.
I thought he was an obnoxious, skinny, talented jerk when he started his big league career playing for the Pittsburgh Pirates; he was an obnoxious not so skinny but very talented jerk when he moved on to the San Francisco Giants and had some very big years in the mid-90s, and more recently he has been an obnoxious, grotesque-looking jerk as he has unbelievably pursued two of baseball's most honored records: the single season home run mark and now the career home run record.
And let's get this straight, too, Barry Bonds will break Henry Aaron's record this season and he'll hold the record for many years to come. The record will be his so get used to it. There will be no asterisk implying that Bonds's records were tainted. His still not completely proven use of performance enhancing substances was not against the rules of Major League Baseball when he did or did not use the stuff. I am repulsed by the idea that steroids took such a hold of my favorite sport but still there should be no erasing of his records by the suits at Major League Baseball, who are now so embarrassed by the chase.
Bud Selig, Commissioner of Major League Baseball, has made it clear that he might be too busy to attend the games when Bonds could break Aaron's mark. Something about re-arranging his sock drawer or shredding old credit card receipts or something like that.
Of course Selig and all his fellow MLB suits cheered wildly and madly while the bloated figures of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa chased the single season record of Roger Maris in 1998, the year those two guys "saved" baseball. And they cheered wildly and madly when such "big stars" as Brady Anderson and Greg Vaughn and Luis Gonzalez hit 50 or more homers in a season, far surpassing any total they had previously reached. (When you look at those guys' career records, their one big year can only make you laugh.) The Golden Age Selig called it.
But lost in the hoopla of '98 was an envious superstar in San Francisco. Bonds saw it all, saw the adulation that McGwire and Sosa got in their homer chase and got jealous. So he went to the body changer. The very good player became the most effective home run hitter in baseball history. All this as he passed age 35. By the time he was 37, in 2001, his body and his swing produced the greatest home run season ever. But in addition to the homers he had an apparent growth spurt in his head. A longish noggin turned into a pumpkin shape. No one really doubted the source of his power. But, again, it was not against the rules.
Nothing really became against the rules in baseball when it came to steroids and other performance enhancing substances until March 17, 2005. That was when McGwire and Sosa and Rafael Palmiero and admitted juicer Jose Canseco stunk up a Capitol Hill hearing room with their "testimony" before a House Committee looking into steroids in baseball. After that the rules started to change drastically. The Players Association came to agree with the team owners that something needed to be done. (Perhaps, the specter of some further, more real, scrutiny from Congress had something to do with this.) The monster they had all created and nurtured and celebrated had to be somehow eliminated. Canseco? He was done already. McGwire, too. Sosa made an enfeebled return to play for the Orioles that season where he shared a clubhouse with the adamantly anti-steroid Palmiero. While Sosa turned into a weak-fielding weak-hitting disgrace, Palmiero managed to test positive for steroids after he swore to Congress that he never used the stuff. And then he blamed a supplement he got from a teammate. You gotta love that guy.
But it's Bonds we're here to talk about. Bonds didn't disappear. He stayed on, seemed to grow even bigger as he drew a huge salary and huge crowds to the Giants beautiful ballpark by the Bay. And he kept hitting homers. Oh, not as many as before but enough to make you wonder if he really could break Aaron's record.
And now here he is, 21 homers away from tying the mark, 22 from breaking it and Bud Selig, who as Commissioner of MLB oversaw all these goings-on and encouraged it and said that we were living in baseball's Golden Age while it was happening, now seems ready to hide from it all. After the Congressional fiasco he appointed former Senator George Mitchell to "investigate" baseball's steroid problem. Ha Ha Ha. Mitchell's a board member of the Red Sox, he's Chairman of the Board of Disney, which owns ESPN. He's the owners' guy. Do you really think he's ever going to find anything worth talking about? Will he ever be in a position to recommend changes? To recommend tossing a player from the game? Not likely.
So Barry's going to break the record and all Bud can do is sulk. Asked recently at a San Francisco area luncheon whether he would trail Bonds as he neared the record, Selig made his position pretty clear.
"I wasn't there when Roger Clemens won his 300th game. That's a matter I'll determine at some point in the future," Selig said. "Let me say it, and I'm not going to say anymore. That's it."
Roll back the calendar to April of 1974 when Aaron was putting the finishing touches on his pursuit of Babe Ruth. Selig then was a much younger owner of a big league team, the Milwaukee Brewers, and a good friend (as he is now) of Aaron's. I'm sure he was unhappy at the time with then-Commissioner Bowie Kuhn. That baseball survived Bowie Kuhn's sanctimonious stewardship proves what a great game it is.
As the 1973 season had wound down, Aaron stepped up his chase and remarkably ended that year one homer short of tying the Babe. Kuhn made it pretty clear that winter that he would not trail Aaron and the Atlanta Braves waiting for the big homer to be hit. He did, however, manage a smart move when he said the Braves could not hold Aaron out of a season opening series in Cincinnati to better insure his breaking the record in front of the home-town fans. (Just why Atlanta was opening that season on the road is another question that was never asked.) So Aaron played and on Opening Day he tied the record in the presence of Kuhn and Vice President Gerald Ford with a three-run homer in his first time at bat. No more homers followed that day. Aaron, 40 years old, sat out the next game and then played the final game of the Reds series and went 0 for 3.
The Braves went home for their home opener the next night, Monday April 8. There were almost 54,000 people in attendance and one of them was not Bowie Kuhn. When Aaron walloped an Al Downing pitch over the left field fence in the 4th inning, Bowie was in Cleveland, ostensibly wrapping up a meeting with the Wahoo booster club. And Bowie never saw anything wrong with this.
Now Selig, by his statements and his expected inaction, seems to have relegated Henry Aaron's home run record to the status of Gaylord Perry winning his 300th game, or Steve Carlton; or Don Sutton; or even Roger Clemens. By saying what he did, he has already diminished his friend Henry Aaron's accomplishment.
When I worked at the NHL, the 1993-94 season was marked by Wayne Gretzky's pursuit of Gordie Howe's career goal-scoring mark, kind of a Henry chasing Babe on ice. As the Great One approached career goal 800 (and Gordie's total of 801) Commissioner Gary Bettman hit the road. As his PR guy, I certainly wasn't going to let him pull a Bowie and to his credit he never thought about not being there either. And we were there that wonderful night in Los Angeles when Gretzky got the goal. Not being there was, frankly, unthinkable.
One more thing: last spring Seton Hall University and ESPN did a poll on people's attitudes towards Bonds and the use of steroids in baseball. One result in particular struck me: 35 percent of African-American respondents thought race was the most important reason for Bonds being the center of attention on the steroid question, while only 2 percent of non African-Americans felt that race was the reason for Bonds being "singled out." For a sport that has done its best to alienate fans of all races and for a sport that has seen its African-American fan base diminishing and its African-American player base shrinking as well, Bud Selig needs to find some way to hide his discomfort and displeasure and be there when Barry Bonds breaks this record. He did it all in the Golden Age of your game Bud, now deal with it.
Brooklyn Decker
Tatiana Golovin
Tweets of the Week
Did You See That?
Comments (20) Add A Comment
I was trying to decide whether to give a hearty "here,here," or whether I so passionately disagreed with Pincus' post that it sounded like it was time for a throwdown. And that's when it hit me: I'm completely agnostic on whether Bud Light is in attendance when Bonds breaks the record.
Truth is, this comment is little more than a pretext to say that Art's "might as well get used to it" resignation that the all-time record, along with the single-season record, will soon be a by-product of the juice, is a nice rejoinder to my previous post endorsing McGwire for the Hall of Fame. Here ya' go:
http://www.fannation.com/blogs/post/4971
quote:
"Mark McGwire hit 583 home runs in major league baseball games. They counted. Every one. They still "count" - there are not projects underway to go back, scrub the records of the "tainted" dingers, and reverse the outcomes of those games, or seasons."
Same reasoning ... get used to it ... it happened, it's part of baseball history, and it ain't gonna be erased ...
Howard Camerik
Weston, FL
Total Comments (123)
Arthur: I like to say that Bonds' head orangutaned. The side of his face just started growing. Gross.
Bonds will break the record. Pre-steroids he was the most consistent player in the 90's. After steroids he hit more home runs. Regardless, Selig should be there. You outline that very well.
As for the race question, I think you bring up a good point here. That said, the 35% who feel Bonds is given a hard road because of his race are doing a disjustice to Hammerin' Hank. THAT man had a hard time; he's the hero here. Not Bonds.
chicago al
Total Comments (336)
Nice way of sticking it to the phonies in MLB; juicers.
Serge Ouellette's…
Total Comments (2)
Howard: McGwire's homers do count and if the voters ignore his numbers and impact on the game (undeniable I think) when it comes to the Hall, they're stupider than believed. Of course, that is exactly possible.
Whether Bud Light (love that; I'm using it from here on with full credit of course) shows up to see Barry hit 756 really doesn't matter. What matters is how easily Bud Light (thanks Howard) will diminish Aaron's accomplishments by his dumb words and impending dumb actions.
And Al: I don't think that 35 percent are doing an injustice to Bad Henry. I think it actually recognizes what he had to go through to get where he was and is. And believe it or not, one of the people who recognized that back then publicly is the very same Bud Light (thanks Howard).
Arthur Pincus
Total Comments (783)
I for one look foward to seeing him break Hank Aaron's record. Even thogh he took stearrods like every other hall of famer.
John Thomas Follin
Total Comments (3)
John Thomas: Maybe you can go in Bud's place!
Arthur Pincus
Total Comments (783)
Selig is an idiot. Baseball is alive today because of Sosa, McGwire, and Bonds. Yea they did a little extra to get the edge, but who doesn't? There is a great quote by the former captain of my football team and it reads, "If you ain't cheating, you ain't trying." Plus who really cares, about the steroid isssue, Arthur makes a great point that it wasn't illegal to use steroids when he did. Also, remember this point, and its the biggest one for all of you Bonds haters: When Bonds played for Pittsburg, all skinny and what not, he was cranking HR's. The only differenece now is that he hits the HR's out of the park instead of into the stands, WOW big difference. The thing that we must keep in mind is that steroids do not help with hand-eye coordination and hip turn (two things that make HR hitters great). So just get over it. Bonds is legit, and Selig is blind.
-NilStradamus
Nile
Hartford, CT
Total Comments (50)
Arthur, I can't think of two people that I'd rather not see than Barry Bonds and Bud Light (thanks, Howard). However, seeing them together on such an occasion, given who each of them are and what each of their legacies mean to this game, puts each of them in the company they deserve. I love this game. And for that reason, I will not be watching.
Bob McGee
Total Comments (1)
Welcome Bob. I'll watch that home run and the ceremony if I can. It could be like slowing down to see a car accident but I'll watch. Bud Light (thanks Howard) makes a big mistake and diminishes Aaron's record by his comments. Putting Bud Light (thanks Howard) in the commissioner's office back in 1974, there's no way he would have been anywhere but at Aaron's games. Now the same record is only the equal of a pitcher winning 300? That's the height of stupidity.
And don't forget those poll numbers. A lot of people will look at Selig's actions as a racial thing. Creating that atmosphere is even stupider.
Arthur Pincus
Total Comments (783)
Two follow-ups.
First, I'm pretty sure I purloined "Bud Light" from some South Florida talk show host (can't remember who), so I relieve all further obligations for attribution.
Second, Nile, I strongly disagree with the naysayers who claim that steroids don't "really" help, eye-hand and all that. It's my understadning that the strength, and maybe the drug effect itself, quickens you. And if you've ever stood in that batter's box, you know that extra split-second of time, to recognize, decide, and react, is EVERYTHING. Steroids DO explain why Bonds suddenly became a .370 hitter in his late 30s. He always had the power to hit them out. But being able to wait, and wait, and then pick out the perfect pitch, is what has keyed his incredible middle-age surge. Of course, that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Howard Camerik
Weston, FL
Total Comments (123)
Howard,
You could argue that steroids quickens you because yes, it does speed up your fast twich muscle fibres. However steroids do not affect the nervous system (the coordination between seeing the pitch (eye) and swinging (hand); hand eye coordination).
I think being a .370 hitter in his late 30's is not due to steorid use, however it is a matter of maturity. With time, anything becomes easier,the more you do it? Would you agree?
I will not argue that steroids diddn't help him, because they did, but this cannot marr what Barry has accomplished.
-NilStradamus
Nile
Hartford, CT
Total Comments (50)
Below an excerpt form a Q & A between David Laurila from Baseball Prospectus and Andy Andres. Mr. Andres teaches a course in sabermetrics as well as being a PHD in Physiology,
David Laurila: A common argument is that steroids don't help a hitter make solid contact with a 95 mph fastball, which is more important than any distance that might be gained from their use. Is that a valid point?
Andy Andres: In my opinion, it's not. Most people understand that you can increase the distance you hit a baseball with increased strength, but what isn?t understood is that increases in skeletal muscle power increases the speed of muscular contraction. That improvement in quickness would increase bat speed. While he was on his run in 1998, Sammy Sosa was interviewed and said that he had learned to wait on pitches longer. Those words were really code for ?I can swing the bat faster.? The time involved is milliseconds, so the important difference was that his bat speed had improved. I think it?s clear that better bat speed improves the amount of time for pitch recognition, and that is likely enough to make a difference for elite hitters.
A BASEBALL GEEK
Total Comments (27)
Nile: I think, as I said, that Selig trying to ignore or diminish Bonds's achievement is ridiculous. So I'm with you there. But, and I haven't done any real studying on the impact of steroids on various skills a major leaguer has to have but all evidence that I can see is that it does affect most of them and improves most of them. People thought, well, it can't help pitchers. And then pitchers became the most suspended group. and the speed of a bat, as the Geek's comment makes a very good point of, is going to get faster. Faster bat, more pop. More selective on the pitches, more hits.
And actually when Bonds played in Pittsburgh he averaged about 25 homers a season for seven years. Not bad but not what he's done since.
But you are absolutely right: the fact is that Bonds accomplished what he has accomplished within the rules of the day. No one has proven differently and no one is likely to prove differently. So as we say, Deal with it Bud.
Arthur Pincus
Total Comments (783)
Hi Arthur, I'm in the mood for baseball, everyone in Ottawa is spellbound by the Senators / Sabres hockey brawl. ( I'm not PC, I found it extremely entertaining).
Anyway, how is Bud going to "Deal with it". It being Barry.
I think the "reporting" we are seeing on MLB,com is revealing.
MLB.com is a shill for the owners. Feb 22 there was a fluff piece on the George Mitchell investigation, his stormtroopers are touring Spring Training. The last paragraph of the story is I think indicative of what we're going to be seeing from MLB in their efforts to "deal with it".
"In the meantime, documented steroid use at the big-league level has become almost infinitesimal, down from the 5-to-7 percent of players who tested positive in 2003. Last season, no player on the 25-man roster of the 30 teams tested positive. It was announced after the postseason that Mets reliever Guillermo Mota had tested positive and he will be suspended the requisite 50 games to open the 2007 season."
So MLB is going to be pounding home two messages on the steroid front. 1. George Mitchell will tell us as definitively as anyone can, what happened. 2. Testing is working, positive tests are on the decline ( see paragraph above ).
As I said before, the results of the 03 "anonymous" testing that revealed 5 - 7 % of players positive seems absurdly low.
For MLB.com to describe present day steroid use at the big league level as "infinitesimal" is ridiculous. Well at least I did learn how to spell infinitesimal" from this PR piece.
Bud will not be in the stadium when Bonds hits 756. Judging from what I see ( or don't see ) on MLB.com, they can't get far enough away from Bonds.
As a New Yorker do you think that Giambi and Sheffield got off lightly with the NYC press?
A BASEBALL GEEK
Total Comments (27)
Geek: I'm in the mood for baseball, too. And to agree with my Canadian pal one more time, I think MLB.com is doing the owners' bidding on the Bonds and steroids issues. To prepare to write this blog on Feb. 19, the day before the second greatest home run hitter in baseball history to this point was to report to spring training, I thought I'd spend some time on mlb.com reading up on what they were saying in Giants camp about Bonds's impending arrival (impending's a good word, I think; has the sound of doom). Thought I'd see that big feature on the front page about Bonds and what people expect. Maybe I'd see that countdown clock like they've got at PacBell (I know that's not the name, but who knows what it is now). And what follows is what I found.....
That's right, nothing. Nada. Rien. Bupkis. I decided I had enough targets to shoot at in this post so I left mlb.com alone. Your point is definitely bang on and well taken.
On another point you make: I suspect a home and home between the two best teams in the NHL Northeast Division both ending 6-5 with some good scraps and plain dislike on each side was very entertaining. I agree again (getting to be a habit). PC, hell, it's hockey,
Arthur Pincus
Total Comments (783)
While I think Bud Light is a total weiner, and a slippery one at that, here's one thought...being present for something like a HR or a Hit is kind of hard to arrange. Being there for a pitcher's 300th, well that's pretty easy, a pitcher makes a start every 5 days, just show up on the right day. With something as hard to come by as a HR or hit, you never know when it might happen...basically, once Bonds gets to 754, Bud will just need to be at every game from then on...and depending on how Bonds is swinging this season, that could amount to several game....so in the guy's defense, it's not a simple thing.
What really irks me about the whole thing, is that Bud is just such a spinless jerk. Here he is claiming that steroids are all but gone (What? No test for HGH, what was the next question?)...and yet, he's trying to distance himself from Bonds...if steriod use was really dead, and people really belived that, wouldn't he then want to embrace Bonds? But, nope, Bud is as spinless as they come.
Finally, if Bonds had an ounce of charisma and a little less prima donna/selfifh jerk in him...I think this is all a moot point. But the guy has always been a total arsehole, and always will be. When you pee all over everyone on your way up, they are all going to line up to pee on you on the way down...and that's what you're seeing here. The guy has always treated eveyrone around him like they weren't worth his time...and it shows that no one appreciated it.
Josh
Total Comments (5870)
Josh: right on the Bonds points. No one really cares if he breaks the record. As a result, Henry Aaron gets the short end again.
And as for how long Selig would have to be on the road to watch Bonds and the giants....so what? He could spend his days wherever doing whatever he does (phones, computers, naps, bratwursts) and go to the game at night. It only means he'd be going to a baseball game every day. That wouldn't exactly be a terrible thing for the Commish of MLB, would it? It really is a simple thing.
but he is spineless on the whole steroid issue and frankly they asked for it.
Arthur Pincus
Total Comments (783)
Geek: You had another question about Sheffield and Giambi and the NY press. Yes, I think they have gotten off lightly. Giambi made his dumb apology....for what? Never said. Sheffield caught a break on this, I believe, because he made it seem like he was screwed by Bonds. And you know what they say about my enemy's enemy. So Sheffield became their friend. The NY press is no worse than most other groups on this issue. But they're certainly no better. Oh, they have been right there with praise for the work done by Williams and Fainaru-Wada in the SF Chronicle. but the sum of their real insight into the steroids issue is so far .....
Arthur Pincus
Total Comments (783)
I don't know why you guy's can't stand Bary Bonds. He will soon beat Hank Aaron so grt over it.I for one like Bonds even though he took starods and lied in the house when he sworn that he didn't take starods. So you guy's need to suck it up. he's already close to beating Hank Aaron 715 home run record.I think he is going to beat his record this year.Bary Bonds Is going to beat his record like it or not so yall guy's need to suck it up.
John Thomas Follin
Total Comments (3)
First, no one said he isn't going to break the record. Second the record is 755 homers not 715. Third, he never testified in the House or anywhere else about taking steroids. But you are right about one thing: can't stand Barry Bonds.
Arthur Pincus
Total Comments (783)
Comment
Remember to keep your posts clean. Profanity will get filtered, and offensive comments will be removed.