Until someone builds an Olympic village on a Grecian cliff overlooking the cobalt sea, SBC Park in San Francisco will continue to carry the torch as the most beautiful venue to host a sporting event this side of cruise-ship shuffleboard.
It's truly a shame, then, that even on those glorious days when the weather cooperates and the bay becomes a playground for sailors, there is a dark cloud looming over the events that transpire daily from spring to fall. Sadly, SBC's prized feature, McCovey Cove, has seen about as many clean home run balls as American League pitchers typically hit in a season-to the opposite field.
That's an exaggeration, of course, since I'm sure there have been several legit dingers over the years because the Giants have had lefty bats like Ray Durham and Michael Tucker who have probably made a splash. And there have to be some visitors responsible for the homers that make some sense of the otherwise-eerie flight attendant rhetoric, \in the event of a water landing""-like Ken Griffey Jr., Jim Edmonds, or even Jim Thome when he isn't setting the record for ""most strikeouts where he whiffs so hard he loses his footing.""
For the most part, however, kayakers are beating eachother senseless with their silly little paddles for home run balls off the bat of Barry Bonds. Since the Giants' new park opened in April 2000, Bonds' career home run total has risen like Google stock. As of Sunday, he had hit his 705th career homer-10 shy of passing Babe Ruth for second all-time.
All 714 of the Babe's blasts were free of performance-enhancing substances (unless you think someone on one big, perpetual bender can be considered ""enhanced"") though the same can't be said for Bonds. It's hard to know how many of Bonds' were a result of hand-eye coordination and how many were a result of steroid user-steroid supplier coordination.
Could we ever get close to knowing? Doubtful, since everyone knows the developments in testing and the conflict of interest that MLB has; they can relentlessly pursue the truth until steroids are gone, but what if the investigation leaves only sullied superstars in its wake? Other than the playoff excitement in recent years, the game would have no appeal without its home run record chases. They aren't going to compete with the NFL or NBA if they start over-promoting Craig Biggio-types. Financial beneficiaries of baseball's success don't need ""consummate professionals,"" they need consummate products.
Regardless of what anyone thinks may come of these ongoing steroid investigations, they aren't going to wipe every power hitter in the last 20 years out of the record books. It just won't happen. And I can understand why. There's no way to tell who took steroids and who didn't.
For players like Bonds-a player who has admitted to using a cream that he didn't know was a steroid at the time; whose home run numbers soared in his late 30s; and whose head has swollen to the size of his ego (a dead giveaway since there's no exercise for your skull)-the closest thing to justice is skepticism. An asterisk is as much a metaphor as anything else. I have never seen this actual record book that people often speak of (Is it a leather-bound in a display case in Cooperstown?...Written in the stars?) which will supposedly soon be peppered with asterisks, so I am going to assume that people don't look at it often enough for its notation to influence how people view the players' achievements in the scope of history. Since sports show hosts and columnists can't take players out of the record books even if they don't rightfully belong-Bonds, for instance-the only thing they can do is take away the value that being in the record book would otherwise hold (if today's column were a book, that last sentence would be the synopsis on the inside cover).
After all, they don't play to be at the top of a home run list which exists only as a proverbial entity-being at the top of such a list is accompanied by recognition and adoration. If you take that away, the steroid-induced records aren't worth the paper they're not printed on.
And still, no matter the persuasive power of sports personalities and former athletes alike who may throw dirt on Barry Bonds' name, he most likely will pass the man that the lovable Sandlot cast called ""The Sultan of Swat,"" ""The King of Crash,"" ""The Colossus of Clout,"" ""The Great Bambino."" The incomparable Babe Ruth.
As really old guys who watched him play might say, ""he was something else,"" and I couldn't agree more. Maybe it's that I really like the thought of arguably the best baseball player of all-time being overweight. Or maybe it's that in every picture taken of him he has either a cigar, a drink, a woman, or an amusingly abundant combination of the three-and that if you didn't know who he was, you would look at the pictures and say, ""Wait, which one is the baseball guy? The husky one with the snout? Seriously? Come on...""
He was the ultimate hedonist. And whether you can appreciate the humor in people like that thriving in human society or not, he still manages to be more likable than Bonds-which matters to me since if he passes Ruth, people who don't want to ruffle feathers will bow to the fa??ade and give Bonds an undeserved place in baseball history.
Bonds' heir of superiority has always been validated by those who think his numbers basically excuse his condescending nature. Had his numbers been accumulated the right way, I just might have agreed. Instead, evidence against him (and baseball as a whole) continues to mount and corruption has pervaded the sport. Roger Maris lost his single-season record to two Andro turbines in cleats while Jason Giambi has apologized for steroids (almost) even though there is no apology that makes up for the two homers he hit in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS which sent my beloved Red Sox packing.
So it's funny that steroids-which had a part in keeping the legend of Babe's curse alive two seasons ago-are about to award Ruth's legendary 714 homers the bronze medal in history. A year ago, I might have called this delicious irony. But now that he has lifted his famed curse from my Red Sox, I'm hoping it's something else. Maybe the Bambino, in one final act of divine intervention, will keep Bonds from passing him-whether it's intentional walks, ground-outs hits to the shift, or bum knees for the remainder of his career. So when you think about it, Bonds doesn't stand a chance. And remember, the Babe is pretty good with that curse stuff too, since he either feels bad about it after 86 years or it just wears off after that period of time. And who cares if it wears off in 86 years? It's not like Bonds will be playing for that long.
I mean, there's no steroid that can do that, right?
Ben can be reached for comment at bphubner@wisc.edu.
