Bonds: Why Should We Care?
Barry Bonds recently passed up his godfather Willie Mays by hitting his 661st homerun. ESPN gave all of us the liberty to see each and every at-bat that Barry had so far this entire season. Personally, I was very unhappy with their decision to do this. I agree it is a great feat but I would have rather watched what was going on in the Anaheim game. We all saw the homerun a hundred times after it happened so why did they have to cut from a live game? Barry may or may not have taken steroids but I have a very convincing argument that he most defiantly did. Before the magical 73 homerun season, Barry never hit more than 49 homeruns. In fact, he only hit 40 or more before that 4 times. He went from 34 homers in 99' to 49 homers in 2000 to 73 homers in 2001. A little strange if you ask me. Did he walk as much as he does now? No, not nearly as much. So what is the media even asking the question of his foul play when nobody even has argued that angle. Everyone complaines about how Barry acts like a 12 year old kid yet they still publicize him more than any other player.

How can anyone argue he is the greatest of all time? How can anyone not just easily say Ruth is the greatest hands down? Ruth was the first to hit 30,40,50, and 60 in a season. He out-homered several teams by himself. Ruth had outstanding numbers in an era that had nothing.

Bonds is just another player that does a pretty average thing these days. Players like Brett Boone and Marcus Giles got big over an offseason and suddenly are deep homerun threats. The players we see are average ballplayers and are incomparable to those of the throwback years. The closest player we have to that time is Garrett Anderson. He is a quiet, under the radar type guy who just kept getting better each year as time passed. We can play the game of juiced or not juiced.

Baseball is not what it was. It still is a great game but tradition and history seem to be of less value.

John  ¶ 11:16 PM