Sitting in a brewery/restaurant in San Jose Saturday night,
drinking beers amongst friends and strangers, I watched the most
known record in sports become a tie. Barry Bonds had just smacked a
home run over the left field wall in San Diego’s Petco Park, his
755th, and to be honest, I wasn’t quite sure how to react.
Sitting in a brewery/restaurant in San Jose Saturday night, drinking beers amongst friends and strangers, I watched the most known record in sports become a tie. Barry Bonds had just smacked a home run over the left field wall in San Diego’s Petco Park, his 755th, and to be honest, I wasn’t quite sure how to react.
Over the past couple years, my point of view on the impending breaking of Hank Aaron’s all-time home run record has needed revision several times. Despite having been vocal about how Bonds’ chase of The Hammer was tainted and amounted to statistical fraud, in a sport where statistics are everything, lately I’ve been wondering if that stance is too holier-than-thou.
I ask almost everyone who I discuss sports with their opinion on the matter, and each one is usually different. None has pulled me to one side; however, each has affected my overall disposition towards the chase.
But lately, the opinions I’ve heard have been less charismatic. There is less passion from the “asterisk army” camp and there is less of a case put forth by the “it doesn’t matter” defenders. Maybe it’s been the inevitability of Bonds’ breaking of the record that makes either point moot, but sitting in the pub after the historic home run, it became blatantly clear to me why I didn’t know how to react.
Arguing for either side is a Catch-22.
If I cheered on Bonds’ accomplishments, I was applauding deception, greed and the steroids era of baseball (allegedly, of course). If I booed, I would be discounting the ability and longevity of one of the greatest players, if not the greatest, in baseball history.
The best example of The Catch (no, not Willie Mays’) was MLB commissioner Bud Selig. He attended the game to celebrate Bonds’ achievements due to media pressure, but he did not clap for Bonds after the home run was hit. A friend of Aaron, Selig could not bring himself to fully embrace the moment.
It’s impossible to say whether the rest of the pub on Saturday was filled with die-hard sports fans such as myself, but the overall reaction from people in this particular Bay-Area establishment – with nearly a dozen flat-screen TVs showing the game – was just as telling as Selig’s.
After a small contingent of fans finished hooping and hollering, people quickly settled back into their meals and conversations. The greatest record in sports had just been matched and the majority of people near me seemed more interested in whether someone could pass the salt.
In a time when breaking news and yesterday’s news have never felt so near to one another, the Bonds debate is older than Julio Franco. We’ve been over BALCO, Bonds and the home run record for so long now, people are burnt out. Everyone just wants this damn thing over with.
Bonds certainly deserves credit for tying, and eventually breaking, the record. He also deserves blame for making many stop caring.
