I'm Gonna Talk About Barry Bonds For A Minute
Sunday, May 06, 2007
Couldn't help but notice that in the last week, two important figures chimed in with divergent viewpoints on Barry Bonds and his pursuit of Hank Aaron's career homerun record. First, Baseball-Reference.com founder Sean Forman, in an interview with Larry Brown Sports:
"As far as the site goes, I’m a PED-agnostic. I’m just recording what happens on the field. [Bonds] is clearly one of the greatest players ever. I never thought we’d see Ruthian or Ted Williams-like seasons again, but he has done it."Makes sense: as a stats site, Baseball-Reference.com has an obligation to follow the official statistical record. If those record books end up being changed at some point to reflect wrongdoing within the game (and consider this: none of the statistics associated with the 1919 World Series, the worst scandal in baseball history, have been altered), then and only then should Forman change his.
The second selection comes from Newsweek's George Will's column on Mobile, Alabama's Hank Aaron:
"When Bonds hits his 756th, real fans, who know how to read the record book, will yawn, confident that Aaron's record will remain the real one until Alex Rodriguez, who has 175 more home runs than Bonds did when he was Rodriguez's age, breaks it."Will simultaneously decries Bonds and gives us an alternative hero to root for in Alex Rodriguez. This begs a question: what happens if Rodriguez used/uses steroids? Or Albert Pujols, David Ortiz, Manny Ramirez, or any other prolific homerun hitter? Who do we root for then?
4 Comments:
I guess the reality is that he's going to break the record no matter how any of us feel about it.
the question now is how do we look at this season, along with every season since steroid testing took hold? his production has not slowed down. should this impact the argument? if PEDs helped him, how is he doing this without them?
This mentality of literary purity of the game only affects baseball for whatever reason. Baseball, and its stuffier advocates, are trying to sweep the sport's complicity in whatever matter of PEDs under the rug.
Eventually we'll find out what happened. For now, I'll just watch Barry as he goes about breaking the record.
this is not related, but in sportscenter a few minutes ago jon buchegros(?) invited us to throw some ds on the show, then went to sc reset and showed the homer. This made absolutely no sense.