August 12, 2007
From Richard Nixon to Barry Bonds Posted by Alexander Burns at 12:50 PM EST Yesterday Joshua Zeitz noted that this blog had overlooked the anniversary of Richard Nixon’s departure from the White House, and he offered some thoughts on the occasion. In the same spirit of playing catch-up, I’ll note that there was another event in the last week, of greater public note, that went unmentioned on this site. On August 7, Barry Bonds, of the San Francisco Giants, hit the 756th home run of his career, breaking Hank Aaron’s longstanding record of 755. Bonds is among the most controversial people in professional sports today and has been accused of steroid use, perjury, and probably other offenses of which this writer is unaware. Whether his home run record has any legitimacy is a subject that sports fans are now debating. Whatever consensus they finally reach will have implications for the game known as America’s pastime. I’m curious whether there are any baseball fans among my fellow blog contributors, and, if so, what they think about the Bonds dilemma. I’m also interested to see what thoughts, if any, may arise in the discussion section of this site. For whatever it’s worth, it’s the opinion of this casual and intermittent baseball fan that Bonds’s record has some value but isn’t really equivalent to Aaron’s achievement. It’s well known that steroids have warped the great records of baseball, and I don’t think it would be exactly right to say that what Bonds has accomplished was as great a feat as what Aaron did, given the extra help Bonds probably had. At the same time, unless you’re willing to toss out all the top records from the last decade or so, it seems a little unsporting to single out Bonds for special disdain. Obviously that’s a pretty inconclusive, on-the-one-hand/on-the-other-hand kind of opinion, but I haven’t really found a more satisfactory view on the whole affair. Bonds has his defenders: “Bonds is the greatest hitter to ever play, steroids or no.” And he has his detractors: “Barry Bonds broke this record . . . by cheating and defrauding the good name of baseball.” It’s not at all clear to me which of these assessments is more appropriate, so naturally I’m floating somewhere in between. The most impressive reaction to Bonds’s record-breaking, not coincidentally, has been from the man whose record he topped. “No asterisk,” Aaron told reporters in response to a question about whether Bonds’s record should be qualified with a footnote. He said elsewhere, “I have been privileged to hold this record for 33 years. I move over now.” What class. Whether one wants an asterisk next to Bonds’s name or not, it’s impossible not to admire Aaron’s dignified reaction.
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