Bits & Pieces

A Baseball Tragedy

By Kim J. Harmon

If you are a baseball fan, this should be the greatest time of your life – but it isn’t, thanks to Barry Bonds, thanks to steroids, thanks to the pervasive desire for more money and fame and notoriety, thanks to a baseball culture that lusted after home runs and prodigious feats of power.

As of this writing, Bonds was one homerun shy of Hammerin’ Hank Aaron’s record of 755 and by the time you read this may have already become the new home run champion and if that doesn’t leave a bad taste in your mouth I would have to wonder why.

Aaron played for 23 years and except for his rookie season (when he played 122 games) and the last two years of his career (at ages 41 and 42) he never hit fewer than 20 home runs and never more than 47. Bonds has played for 22 seasons and up until the age of 35 he hit more than 40 home runs only three times in his career, but then hit 49, 73, 46, 45 and 45 home runs over the next five seasons right when most human beings find their skills diminishing.

When he broke Babe Ruth’s record of 714 back in 1974, Aaron was laboring under a cloud of vile racism and enduring repeated death threats. As he approaches Aaron’s record, Bonds is laboring under a cloud of suspicion and enduring the threat of a perjury charge by a federal grand jury.

Roger Connor was the first home run king of baseball and Babe Ruth passed him out in 1921. Ruth was such a mythic figure, even then, that it’s doubtful anyone cared, or even thought about, the man he passed.

Ruth’s record stood for 53 years before Aaron broke it on April 8, hitting a 1-0 pitch from Al Downing of the Los Angeles Dodgers into the left field bullpen. Back then, Aaron was hated and reviled because he was black and because he was breaking the record of a beloved figure.

In 2007, Bonds is hated and reviled (outside of San Francisco) not because he is black, but because he is ready to break the record of a beloved figure – and because he is widely believed to have cheated in the process.

It’s odd, isn’t it, that it has taken 33 years and the plague of steroids for most of us to appreciate what Hank Aaron was all about and what he did. I was 11 years old back in April of 1974 and I was so excited to see that home run sail over the fence. But I’m 44 years old now and I’m just sick with the thought of seeing Barry Bonds trot around the bases after hitting #756.

Just sick about it.

For baseball fans in their 40s and older, this should be the greatest time of our lives – seeing the most hallowed record in professional sports broken.

But it isn’t.

And that’s not just a crying shame – it’s a tragedy.

So, let’s all root for Alex Rodriguez now. Okay, you might not like him (he seems like a phony, he could be a philanderer, yada yada yada), but at the pace he is hitting homers, in his 22nd year he will be approaching 800 and breaking Bonds’ record would be sweet justice for true baseball fans everywhere.