Beirut? Barry Bonds Was Better!

Barry Bonds turned into one today, sent it about 445 feet into the stands, and passed Babe Ruth for #2 on the all-time home run list. 

Barry was all business, although it looked to me like he was happier hitting #714 than the one that put him past the Sultan of Swat. He's kind of surly anyhow, but he didn't grab his testicles or anything. He got mad applause from his fans in San Francisco, who have generally been pretty nice to him ("nice" meaning they don't throw syringes at him).

Old friend Byung Hyun Kim served up the tater, a 90 mph heater that Barry got all BALCO on. It landed on a platform, before rolling to a guy who was- ironically- using the Barry at-bat to beat the line at the hot dog stand. He can sell the ball for a fortune, although he could also just give it to the guy who hit it. Catching famous home run balls is a sort of fan lottery that came up during the McGwire/Sosa homer war, and McGwire's 62nd home run ball sold for a cool million to the guy who does the comic book Spawn.

Barry got some love from his son, and did the obligatory hat tip to his peeps in the crowd. It is sort of surreal, given the brouhaha surrounding Barry's use of steroids. I'm happy for Barry that he did it at home, rather than somewhere that a fan might run out onto the field and stab him in the neck with a hypodermic needle full of pure testosterone. Nothing insane happened, much to the relief of good people almost everywhere.

How much help were the roids? Barry was a top notch hitter when he was lithe and limber, although the goofy homer toals didn't come until the introduction of the Big Head Barry Doll shortly after Bonds got into Chemistry. Was he essentially gaining the production boost that comes with using an aluminum bat?

Most of us will never know. It's not firewater or marijuana, that a goodly portion of us have messed around with. A small % of our population uses these drugs, with most of them being the weightlifter type that were pretty strong to begin with. My job wouldn't be that enhanced if I suddenly had great strength, although it'd be fun to smack people around and stuff. Maybe only Barry knows, although Ratty, Sosa, and Big Mac can probably make a pretty good guess.

Lots of players get high, pound booze, sex up groupies, or gamble wildly at Vegas. Does the relaxation that a guy like Robert Parish gained from smoking lots of chron give him special powers to the degree that Barry's roids did? Parish played till he was like 70.

Mickey Mantle liked to booze it up, and he certainly never had people throwing hypodermic needles at him. The game was fun to him, and he sure looked a lot happier than Barry does. Ironically again... they were abusing roughly the same internal organs with their drugs of choice.

Babe Ruth never batted against a black player. Brothers quickly came to elite status in every sport they've tried- although they have not yet chosen to dominate hockey. If I could eliminate 15% of the population, my stats would improve... especially if the 15%ers were the ones who were really good at sports.

But Babe never did a steroid in his life- the time he would have needed to spend at the gym would no doubt have interfered with his Happy Hour schedule, especially during Prohibition. His reputation is cherished, even if he got a far greater performance boost than Bonds did.

Henry Aaron seems to be the only one a fan can trult trust- he did it clean, against all comers. If Barry wanted to retire as the ultimate hero, the only thing he can do is step up to bat for the 755... then lay the bat down and retire, leaving the record of the always-classy pioneer that was Hammerin' Hank Aaron to be the ultimate pinnacle.  

If he does that, baseball is saved. Kids will wonder who the greatest slugger was, and they'll learn about how Aaron helped smash the color line in a classy manner. If he doesn't, kids will grow up learning that the best slugger of all time was basically chemicalized like a friggin' one man army.

It's Barry's world to save now... we're just living on it. The public perception of America's Pastimemay just rest in the hands of a philandering musclehead with a testosterone-fueled chip on his shoulder.