Barry and the Babe

Well it's April and that means Major League Baseball is back. Normally, this is the time when all the baseball pundits are making their "bold" predictions about who will make the playoffs and win the World Series. But the optimism and anticipation that normally dominates the start of the baseball season has been overwhelmed with awkwardness and controversy. The this cloud of uneasiness hovering over baseball comes from the fact that Barry Bonds is about to surpass Babe Ruth's homerun total and is just one great season shy of passing baseball's all-time homerun king Hank Aaron. Normally baseball would treasure moments like these because in baseball, the only thing better than homeruns are record breaking homeruns. Nothing gives a little extra boost to the revenue stream than a chase towards immortality. However, at this moment the fans, the teams, the sponsors, Bud Selig, etc... all just wish Barry would stop chasing immortality and just take his bat and go home.

You see, baseball embraces it's statistics like no other major sport in America. Baseball's statistics are so well developed that you can determine exactly what happened at any given moment in any given game by simply looking at a correctly completed score card. In many ways statistics are the life-blood of baseball's long and celebrated history. They are what link the past to present. So when one of baseball's most celebrated records is threatened by one of baseballs most infamous villains it's a cause for major concern.

A lot of people disliked Barry Bonds well before it became apparent that he used illegal performance enhancing drugs. Barry is notorious for being an ego-maniac and anti-social. He has had problems with reporters, teammates, fans, managers, etc... long before the BALCO investigation. But, baseball fans can tolerate jerks if they also happen to be fabulous baseball players (which Barry Bonds most certainly is). What fans cannot tolerate is an ego-maniac jerk who also cheats and then publicly lies about it. To top it all off, Barry has stated on a number of different occasions that he is being targeted because of his race. So he's a cheating, lying, jerk who wants you to treat him like a victim. That is just too much for even the most cynical fan to swallow.

So what can be done about it? Nothing. Baring Barry Bonds being convicted of a serious crime there is nothing baseball can or should do to stop Barry Bonds from passing Babe Ruth and breaking Hank Aaron's record. In fact, as a life-long baseball fan, I would be very upset if baseball intervened in any way to stop Barry from breaking Aaron's record. I think having Barry's name sitting atop the record books would be a fitting punishment for baseball. Baseball created this awkward situation when they chose to ignore the problem of performance enhancing drugs in their sport. So they have no one to blame but themselves for this undesirable scenario.

I say let Barry pass revered legends such as the Babe and Hammerin' Hank. So decades from now I can tell my children and my grand-children about how greedy owners, the greedy baseball players' union, and an inept owner ruined baseball's most celebrate record by creating a monster called Barry Bonds.