This weekend Barry Bonds tied Hank Aaron's career home run record. Anyone who has ready this blog with any sort of consistency, or knows me at all for that matter, knows how I feel about the guy. So what I am about to write may shock some of you......Barry Bonds breaking the home run record is actually good for the game.
Lets flash back to 1994. The focus of the entire season was on if the players and owners would come to their collective senses and realize that the game of baseball belongs to the fans just as much as the share holders. They didn't, and the World Series was cancelled and scores of fans, even die hard life long fans felt cheated and left the game in large droves. I include myself in this group. My childhood best friend being an Expos fan, and I a Yankees fan (of course) had dreamed of a day when those two teams would meet in the fall classic. 1994 would have been the year. No doubt ever baseball fan felt a similar sort of heartbreak.
Baseball was in big trouble, until along came Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa. Ken Griffey Jr. had toyed with the home run record in previous seasons, but in 1997 these two were actually going to do it. For the first time since before the strike fans had something that they were excited about. Regardless of if you were a St. Louis fan, hated the Cubs, or had never watched baseball until that season....everyone wanted to see #62. I remember that night well. I had a date but cancelled it to watch the game. I still don't regret that decision. It was a Renaissance for baseball at a time when it needed it the most.
So we come to today, Barry Bonds, and how he is helping the game just like McGwire and Sosa did a decade ago. Like it or not a run at a record drives huge interest in the game. fair weather fans who might not usually watch anything other than the playoffs or the World Series (and only then if their team is playing) are watching to see what happens. More visibility will inevitably drive more interest in the game, and hopefully help seed a new generation of fans.
Bonds is also making a contribution by throwing steroid use to the forefront of what we consider to be an acceptable trade off. Do we really want to see true athleticism, or are we more excited by seeing chemically enhanced record breaking ? I think that this is a personal question, but morally we all know the answer. We want natural athletes like Griffey, or even A-Rod to own these titles, and not athletes who claim that they never "knowingly" used steroids. Let's hope that when Bonds breaks the record this week the negative example that he has set serves to end what will be known as the steroid era. That would be an even bigger contribution to the game than #756.
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I'll reference back to excellent Klosterman piece to reinforce your point on how we need to reconsider our role as sports fans.
Also, I don't think we can exhonerate A-Rod, Griffey, hell, even Ripken from the steroid discussion. Anyone who played in the 90's is under suspicion, IMO. Look at Raffy Palmeiro -- nice guy, well-liked, didn't have a typical hulking body, and he got busted. Griffey's gotten a lot bigger over the years, who knows?
I think my best point is that it wasn't illegal -- within the rules of baseball -- to use steroids before 2002 or so. Even when it became illegal, I'm sure players had access to the good s--t; I'm talking about the undetectable designer drugs. Look at the players getting caught -- everyone a middling low level nobody. You could make the argument that the only people getting caught are the ones who can't afford the good stuff.
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