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The Impending Fall Of A Giant

by Doug Mataconis @ 12:20 am on April 6, 2006.

This was supposed to have been the year of Barry Bonds. Not only the year that he would surpass Babe Ruth’s home run record, but, perhaps, the year he would surpass Hank Aaron to become the all-time home run leader. Instead, he finds himself shrouded by doubt and suspicion as allegations coninute to surface about his use of performance-enhancing drugs.

SAN FRANCISCO, April 5 — Superimposed over the left field fence at AT&T Park are images of Barry Bonds, Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron and the words, “A Giant Among Legends.”

Bonds’s career home run total, 708, is displayed prominently in right-center, just above those of Aaron (755), Ruth (714) and a legend he has already passed, Willie Mays (660), who happens to be Bonds’s godfather.

For more than a decade, the Giants have been financially and emotionally dependent on their mercurial slugger. Now, with Bonds the focus of a Major League Baseball investigation into steroid use, the dysfunctional relationship has come to epitomize an entire era in baseball, one that brought the sport unprecedented riches but ultimately embarrassment and unease.

In other words, Barry Bonds has come to epitomize the conflict between the ideal of what baseball purists believe the game should be, and what is has become.

Nothing has become more clear over the past several weeks than the fact that Bonds’ steroid use started in the midst of the Mark McGwuire/Sammy Sosa home run race. Bonds wasn’t even a player in that race and it, quite obviously, made him jealous in some respect and motivated him to start using steroids.

The questions is, though, whether that is really such a bad thing. There is no denying that that the McGwire-Sosa race captivated even casual baseball fans. And no doubt that this attention motivated other players, Bonds included, to become better long-ball hitters. Is it really so bad that so-called artifical means were used ? How is that different from the fact that baseball players today have a better diet and workout regime from players in the 1930s ?

Heck. given how baseball players are trained today and what’s expected of them, Babe Ruth’s accomplishments seem all that much more extraordinary.

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One Response to “The Impending Fall Of A Giant”

  1. Conservative Culture Says:
    April 6th, 2006 at 10:20 am

    Replacement Umps on the way

    I just received a letter warning college umpires to be careful about not fulfilling their commitments to games at the college level. Apparently some of them (no… I wasn’t one of them) were asked to do some minor league games. The content s…

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