"While you were away, Barry "crybaby on roids" Bonds hit number 756.
Meaningless! Come on, let's start the debate now!"
First off:
I don't know much about sports. Oh, I guess I know a great deal about how to play football and baseball, and I can go to a game and tell you who the best players are that day and what's happening away from the ball. But the encyclopedic knowledge of every athlete, coach or jock holder involved in the sporting universe goes way beyond my interest. I have personal reasons for that fact, a subject I might tackle later.
Secondly, I don't care. I don't get the whole belief that, somehow, the lifetime home run tally is "the most prestigious record in sports." Oh really?
Yes, hitting a baseball is one of the most difficult sporting feats out there. Running 100 meters in under 10 seconds? Also hard. Beating the crap out of somebody who has done nothing but train for six months? Not easy.
I don't get the ranking of one record over the other or how it's even possible to compare.
Why this shows that Major League Baseball today is in crappy shape:
A lot of people remember the 1998 season as the wonderful year that Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire "saved" baseball. I remember it as the year MLB stopped even pretending that people gave a damn about the game. As in, who has the best team? Who's leading their division?
Nope. Pro baseball today is about a bunch of merceneries out to get the best statistics. The main storyline this season is Bonds, and it's Bonds because MLB doesn't have enough faith that the drama of the Red Sox plowing through everyone is enough to pull in an audience.
They have so little faith that a good season by several quality teams will attract attention, that we instead get non-stop coverage of a chemically enhanced freak that no one likes.
Barry Bonds used steroids. Nyyyahhh.
Yeah. That's pretty obvious. And no one else in baseball ever did. Mark McGuire's record-breaking season out of nowhere was gift from the angel of Babe Ruth and his balls were gently blown over the fence by the ghost of Honus Wagner.
I'll be happy to put an asterisk by Bonds' record so long as we consider every record set in the last 20 years for asteriskability. And that goes for football on the pro and college level.
Barry Bonds is a jerk.
Eh. So in hell he and Ty Cobb will be bunkmates. That's his problem.
Besides, as is often the case, I can't really read if it's him or if it's the relationship he has with the media. Character and media savvy are two different things.
And it's not like this threatens the greatness that is Babe Ruth. The man could eat 30 hotdogs, gulp two pitchers of beer, and then go out and freakin' pound the ball. No one is ever going to be that cool again.
So, the actual quick take on Bonds:
I was mildly happy. Regardless of Bonds, it's an impressive thing to do. And since I work in the sports section, I no longer have to worry about it. It also made a lot dudes on TV with really nice hair and non-deserved attitudes go frothing at the mouth. And I like to see that happen.
*Kind of a random comment, I couldn't peg who that came from. I don't do a whole lot of sports, except talk about Tech and get my non-sexual crush on Wes Welker going.
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