Congratulations Barry Bonds
Look I’ve never been a Barry Bonds fan - even when he was a much skinnier Pittsburgh Pirate who’s contribution to his team was more about his speed than it was about his power so I have no interest in giving him his props on surpassing Hank Aaron’s Major League Baseball Home run record.
But last night Bonds achieved something very few human beings will ever do - a potentially tentative place in the record books by hitting his 756th home run.
Did he use performance enhancing drugs to help him reach this milestone? Almost certainly.
Does it cheapen his accomplishment? Not as far as I’m concerned.
The reality is that the bio-medical assistance Bonds enlisted to assist his quest was not against the rules at the time he used it. Did he lie about it? Yes. - and so does every other athlete out there who uses some form of mysterious methodology (whether it be stealing signs: Bobby Thompson’s “Shot Heard Round the World”, Cy Young’s numerous victories that were certainly aided by the spitball and other pitcher’s doctoring methods, hey Gaylord Perry’s in the Hall of Fame and he even bragged about his cheating) to help them win. All heroes - all enshrined in the history of the game.
But Bonds - he’s tainted. They say there should be an asterisk next to is name (just like many purists said about Roger Maris when he surpassed the single season home run record back in the 1960’s).
Get over it sports purists and snobs. Bonds did it. You didn’t like him before and you don’t like him now.
He still deserves the recognition for an incredible feat.
Bonds gets the treatment he does because most Americans don’t like cheaters. That’s a good thing.
August 8th, 2007 at 1:12 pm
The question I have Eric is if it wasn’t cheating at the time how can we look back in retrospect and call it cheating now?
August 8th, 2007 at 8:52 pm
understand your point and appreciate it. it’s tough. my point really is that we don’t seem to like even the “perception” of having cheated to get where you are, hence the natives being restless.
i think everyone and your brother would LOVE to go nuts about this record being broken but can’t. aside from those in ‘frisco who obviously have the “yeah, but he’s OUR steroid using bum!” mentality. we see that alot in congress as well, right?
i just hate that it’s not a tiger woods type breaking a record. now there’s an agent’s dream.
you can argue the letter of the law ’til the cows come home, but it won’t change the public perception and i think the public has this one about right.
August 9th, 2007 at 11:12 am