B. Bonds’ Rendezvous With Immortality
With one mighty swing of the bat, Barry Bonds last night broke the most hallowed record in the 131-year history of major-league baseball by hitting his 756th career home run.
Mark Spitz’s seven Olympic gold medals, Lance Armstrong’s seven Tour de France victories and Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game all were extraordinary, but don’t compare.
Just as Hank Aaron was both adored and reviled when he broke Babe Ruth’s 39-year old record of 714 home runs in 1974, so is Bonds.
Bonds, like Aaron, is black, and some of the enmity for both stars was and is racially driven. But unlike Aaron, a clean living hard hitter, Bonds has been dogged by allegations that his run for the record books has been helped by performance-enhancing drugs.
It hasn’t helped that Bonds, who has played for the San Francisco Giants for the last 14 seasons, has long had a problematic relationship with fans and sportswriters alike.
But that now seems rather beside the point and this lifelong baseball fan salutes Bonds, who from the moment he connected with a fastball from Mike Bacsik of the Washington Nationals in the fifth inning knew he had hit No. 756, which rocketed over the right center field fence of sold-out AT&T Park and into the record books. (The Nats went on to win, 8-6.)
In a post-game news conference, Bonds offered a sharp response to doubts about his record because of allegations he used steroids:
“This record is not tainted at all. Period. You guys can say whatever you want.”
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35 Responses to “B. Bonds’ Rendezvous With Immortality”
I lifelong baseball fan would know that it is the Washington Nationals. The Senators left town in the 1970′s.
I think one part of the racial aspect is the impulse of many black sports writers and black sports fans to defend Barry Bonds against all attacks. When they claim that he never failed a drug test, they forget to mention that baseball only recently started testing for steroids and that it cannot test for HGH.
If Bonds was juicing, it stands to reason that at least some of the pitchers he hit against were juicing, also. So, even playing field? I don’t know. But, when Hank Aaron was marching to the record, much was made of the short left field in Atlanta. That didn’t diminish his accomplishment.
I watched Bonds faithfully when he was in Pittsburgh. He was just like his dad. Brash, arrogant, supremely talented and a wonder to watch. He was on his way to the Hall way before this all started.
Especially for us poor Pittsburghers, baseball just isn’t what it used to be. And in many ways, it never was, never will be again.
You still left in a ‘Senators.’
Where do you get the racial angle. The animus is clearly Baseball Hardliners vs, those who don’t care, or San Franciscans vs, the rest of fandom. One Frisco fan went sop far as to say, ‘He’s a cheater, but he’s our cheater,’ and was roundly cheered at the park. All were white.
Jason Giambi and Mark McGwire have been excoriated, and both are white. Were it McGwire who hit 756, do you really think Selig wd be praising him? And I think Selig is the worst ‘commissioner’ in MLB history.
Dan, I’m not sure what juicing for a pitcher would do. There are very few big muscular pitchers. I can’t recall anyone in the last 20 yrs, pitching wise, that has improved in the last 5 years of their career. The handful I can think of like Clemens, Schilling, Ryan, and maybe R. Johnson have maintained in their last few years of their careers, but not like Bonds.
OTOH, I recall watching him lose in the World Series when I was a kid and thinking how pretty his swing was.
Guess I need to start cheering for A-Rod, who should if he keeps playing smash this record.
thanks for the correction. Of course, should hitting homers off of the AAA team that is Your Washington Nationals really count for the record books?
Dan:
You make an excellent point about the probability that some of the pitchers who served up homers to Bonds were juiced.
Cosmo:
Nats typo fixed. Thank you.
I note a racial angle because it is pertinent. As I wrote here, ESPN.com columnist Jemele Hill noted that when Bonds breaks the record it will be like the “O.J. Simpson trial all over again.†Presumably without a double homicide.
And an ESPN/ABC News poll found that black fans are more than twice as likely as their white counterparts to want Bonds to break the record and nearly twice as likely to think that he has been treated unfairly.
As I wrote in the post above and want to again emhasize, it alsi is time to put all of that aside and applaude Bonds.
Shaun,
There always will be people that will identify with a person being attacked based on their race. Many African-Americans feel that since African-Americans have traditionally been on the short end of the justice stick in America that means they should defend any black man who is accused of any crime. To them it doesn’t matter whether he is guilty or not.
However making this issue about race is an insult Hank Aaron who dealt with REAL racism his career from nearly Day 1. To argue that racism is the reason that more than a tiny fraction of Americans don’t like him is to deny the popularity of players such as David Ortiz or Vlad Guerrero or Derek Jeter or Alfonso Soriano.(I realize that most of those players are not African-Americans but they have black heritages and I have a hard time believing that a racist would really care)
Barry Bonds was a near certain Hall of Famer going into the mid-90s. He saw players like Mark Mcgwire receiving heaps of adulation because he was knocking out homers left and right, with the aid of juice, and decided that he wasn’t happy with being knocked off the top spot so he decided to cheat to get back on top.
I feel no pity for Bonds at all. He was a surly and generally unpleasant person for most of his career. He cheated by taking illegal drugs and he continues to flip the bird to everyone about the issue. And he will continue to do so until incontravertible proof is discovered.
Making this a racial issue lessens the importance of REAL racial issues.
Haven’t there always been performance enhancing drugs of some kind? Before steroids, there were a bunch of cocaine scandals. Lots of members of the Mickey Mantle generation juiced themselves with amphetemines. And I believe Babe Ruth lowered his batting inhibitions by indulging in the occassional pre-game cocktail.
That’s the first time I’ve heard someone says that alcohol is a performance enhancing drug.
Love or hate him, before he beefed up Bonds was as elegant a ballplayer as I have ever seen.
Ironically, in Pittsburgh we used to call him “Mr. September” because he would blast through the late Summer and then call in sick during the playoffs. Had he won a pennant or a Series in Pittsburgh, he would be as lauded as Jerome Bettis is today. Okay, maybe not. Lot’s of fans, and practically all the writers in town loathed him because he never hid the fact that Pittsburgh was a launching pad for him.
I feel a John Feinstein book coming on…
I posted this in the earlier post down the page but it seems to fit better here:
I’m not a baseball fan so maybe this analogy is off – those of you more in the know can set me straight.
A group of students is taking a high-stakes test (akin to the SAT’s) and one of them uses a calculator expressly prohibited by the test-givers for the math portion of the exam. At the conclusion that student makes a perfect score. None of the other students (who did not use the device) comes even close.
Now, in my mind, the top student cheated and would be disqualified (along with his scores). Yet many are heralding Bonds as a great sportsman for setting records while at least some of that “record-setting†was done while using prohibited substances as performance enhancers.
Am I confused about something here?
Flyhawk:
You are entitled to your opinion, but you might want to brush up on your reading skills.
I am not making this into a racial issue. I note in my post and discuss at some length in the link I provide in an earlier comment that Bonds’ run for the record books inevitably has had racial aspects and cited people and a poll to back that up. To ignore that would be to ignore the elephant in the ballpark, as it were.
I also took great pains to say in my post and in a previous comment that it is appropriate to applaud Bonds for his achievement and put all of that other stuff aside. I have never liked Bonds as an individual, but he is a magnificent player with one of the purest swings in the history of the sport.
That is where my head is today and where I hope everyone else’s is, as well.
Congratulations, Barry!!! It takes great hand-eye coordinations to hit a baseball never mind home runs. There is no drug I know of that can enhance that coordination. So even if he used drugs to enhance his strength, it still doesn’t detract from his talent.
Why does it have racial issues? Because of the achievement or because of the accusations?
You say some of the enmity towards Bonds is racially driven. Now I guess that is technically correct as there will always be a small subset of people who are out and out racists. But those same racists hate Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan so I don’t see how they are pertinent.
And if we aren’t talking about them who are we talking about that hold racially driven enmity towards Mr. Bonds?
Some people are unliked because they are unlikable. This is something that Eddie Murray never understood. And I suspect it is something that Barry Bonds doesn’t understand.
Regarding the steroids controversy, Captain Ed is firing on all cylinders today.
One sports caster said along time ago that unfortunately the record books should be divided into the steroid and pre steroid eras to get a real idea of athletic accomplishments in baseball and any other sport.
He’s a juicer. It’s not up for debate. This doesn’t simply happen to a normal human:
Hank Aaron took Greenies (Amphetamines)
Babe Ruth didn’t play against people of color.
It’s all relative.
Congrats, Barry!
You have any evidence that Aaron took amphetamines?
Regardless there is zero evidence they did anything to enhance a player’s performance.
I’m fairly certain Babe Ruth wasn’t cheating because he didn’t play with minorities.
You’re right that everything is relative. Bonds cheated relative to the majority of his peers.
Baseball acknowledges its cheating pitchers as quaint and puts them in the Hall.
Whether or not Barry took the ‘roids, he belongs. All that matters is how his plaque and exhibit are written. It is impossible to deny that, for the last decade and a half, Barry Bonds has been the single greatest baseball player. He has done things at the plate that make a mockery of the record books. He didn’t just compete with history. He humiliated it.
He belongs in the Hall. If he was juiced, he belongs in the hall next to a statue of shrunken testicles. Boo him at the plate, but clap for the fact that he truly was great.
Barry belongs in the Hall. But that doesn’t mean that we should clap.
Flyerhawk:
Exactly.
As a foreigner, I’m totally at loss in understanding this show of national enthusiasm triggered by the news that some minority guy managed to run a full circle 756 times. What’s that buzz all about? =8-/
On second thought, is it yet possible for Bonds to announce his intention to run for presidency?
Barry Bonds is an ——-, so what, may record holders weren’t the Ironman or Babe hitting a homer for sick kids in a hospital.Ty Cobb and Pete Rose come to mind as great ballplayers, but lousy human beings.
This brings to mind the NFL career rushing leaders, three great runners were within a couple hundred miles of Detroit – Jim Brown, Barry Sanders and Walter Payton.
1) Jim Brown left early and became a controversial political figure.
2) Walter Payton was known as Sweetness because of abilty and personality. He died while waiting for a liver transplant, unlike Mickey Mantle.
3) Barry Sanders,like Brown, left football early even though he was well within the grasp of Payton’s and Brown’s records. His early retirement honored Brown and Payton, and put “games” in their real prespective.
Records are set by both “Sweetness” and ——- like Bonds and Emmitt Smith. Let Bonds join in with the likes of Smith, Cobb and Rose and revel in their selfishness.
I agree with Flyerhawk re: there will always be a lunatic fringe who will inject race into an issue. If a victim of a crime is black, and the perpetrator white, is it always racial? Suppose the mugger is a junky?
Again, I doubt the ridiculous Selig would have been on hand to congratulate McGwire, who’s been in hiding ever since his disgraceful performance in front of congress.
But, let’s face it, people get carried away in their idolatry of sports and other figures. A significant portion of th epublic hates A-Rod- not because he’s black nor Hispanic, but because he’s #1 in salary.
How’s that his fault? If someone wants to overpay me- after years of underpay, that makes me bad cuz I accept? Nonsense.
Similarly, BB is a BB, but there is no evidence that steroids improves hand-eye coordination, only strength. Ask the many pro wrestlers who took steroids about how steroids kybosh reflexes. So, claims that his Hulking up lead to his record are dubious. Yes, a few balls that may have hit the tops of walls prob became homers, but that only means that in the last few years he bulked up, we’re celebrating his record this year, not next.
Like Rose, Bonds is HOF. After all, if Ty Cobb and his white hood are in, BB is a no-brainer.
“——-”
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Hehehe.
The Moderated Voice!
No problem with that, though.
Comrade Rudi, you should have known better
As a NY Giants fan I was no fan of Emmitt Smith’s, but how is he in a league with Bonds, Rose, and Cobb?
cosmos – Only to a lesser extent. Do you recall what ES did with footballs after a TD, he placed them in a box on the sideline. Well Barry handed his TD balls to a referee, without any fanfare or dance. ES took those balls out of the box so that he could sell them for a significant amount of money. He didn’t hand them out to kids in hospitals, he pocketed CASH. Maybe more Rose than the other two. Bonds is a sphincter. Is that OK word police?
I hadn’t heard of E. Smith selling his touchdown footballs. I know he was selling memorabilia for charity a while back. All the time I lived in Dallas he was one of the few class acts in professional sports there, especially among the Cowboys. I can’t recall him getting into any trouble at all unlike a certain wide receiver.
Can’t agree w/ the above statement about Bonds being the best in the last decade and a half. I’m no A-Rod fan (killed the rangers!!) but he’s done pretty well since 94 too.
Jim B – You are correct and I stand corrected. ES sold those footballs to help fund his “Open Doors Foundation”. I stand corrected, he can carry the jo##straps of Barry and Walter(/snark), even Jim Brown. ES isn’t a sphincter afterall.
The record IS tainted. Period. Bonds can say whatever he wants. All those late career guys whose mysterious new workout regimens added 40lbs of muscle and started slamming balls out of the park are the biggest embarassment to the game since the million dollar crybabies went on strike.
> I note a racial angle because it is pertinent.
> “This record is not tainted at all. Period.
> You guys can say whatever you want.â€
Wrong again, of course.
Bonds can claim whatever he wants. The record IS tainted.
Look at the bright side: At least with this story and the mine disaster in Utah, Shaun didn’t somehow blame Bush for this and related disaster in Iraq.
No one is a greater baseball fan then I am. This year I have been so bummed out over Barry Bonds homerun watch that I have hardly even watched baseball.
This from a man who buys the MLB Extra innings every year and has season tickets to the Rockies.
I have been to (1) count em………..ONE game this year and I have season tickets. Baseball will never be the same.
“Say it ain’t so Joe” just hasnt left my head all summer.