Time to Cash in on Bonds?
by TJ Boyd
Barry struggling If Barry Bonds hits his 756th career homerun this season he will be the most prolific homerun hitter in the history of the game. The numbers don’t lie and the numbers tell us that no other baseball player has ever hit more then 755 homeruns in his career.
The last posted odds I saw at BetUs.com were at 20-1 against Bonds accomplishing the feat this season and the debate rages as to whether suspicions of his steroid use would cast an asterisk-requiring shadow over his homerun totals.
The fact may be that Babe Ruth hit his 715 round-trippers using nothing more then beer and hot dogs for fuel, but the same is true for the pitchers that the Babe faced as well. Add that to the fact that the concept of the relief pitcher was unheard of in the Babe’s day while Bonds is usually facing a lefty-specialist by the third time he comes to the plate.
The majority of the pitchers that Bonds has hit his homeruns off of come from the same athletic tradition of training and fitness that Bonds himself is receiving so much criticism for. The fact that in this day and age the pitchers are as guilty of steroid use as the hitters is as ignored a fact as Major League Baseball’s acknowledgment of Bond’s accomplishment itself and is a true representation of the commissioner’s treatment of the steroid issue in general.
By closing his eyes to the problem maybe Buddy Selig was hoping that steroids would just go away but now Bonds’ homerun totals are going to ensure that this issue will remain part of baseball lore forever. Just as thinking about Josh Gibson’s homerun totals will never enable fans to forget about the problems of racism and segregation that entrenched the game for over fifty years, Bonds’ totals will represent the conditions of another era and the ramifications of steroid use.
Will Bonds be the greatest baseball player of all-time if he hits 756? No.
That honor will remain with the Babe. Not only did Babe Ruth change the way the game was played and brought baseball back from the brink of public alienation after the 1919 gambling scandal, but the Babe may have been one of the best pitchers the game has ever seen as well. For excelling at both aspects of the game the Babe will remain the greatest player of all-time.
But there is no doubt that should Bonds hit 756 homeruns, even if he does eventually move to the American League to DH just like Hank Aaron did in Aaron’s final two seasons with the Milwaukee Brewers, Bonds will be the undisputed homerun king of all-time. The numbers don’t lie.
Comments or Questions? Email Tjeero@hotmail.com.
