Home run supremacy, or debauchery to a beloved record and athlete?
When Barry Bonds hit his 756th home run on August 8, surpassing Hank Aaron’s all-time leading record, baseball fans were divided, on an ethical level, about whether Bonds’ feat was “legitimate.”
756 is what it is. No matter how you feel about the man, the numbers speak for themselves. Fans may still regard Hank Aaron as the homerun king, but to deny the historic event that was 756 is just ludicrous.
Still, enthusiasts remain split on Bond’s alleged steroid use, particularly outside of San Francisco where interest in the accomplishment varied from apathy to disdain.
When Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa chased Roger Maris’ record for most home runs in a single season, it garnered plenty of media interest, for the right reasons. The same could be said of Bonds’ surpassing the same record years later. But with steroid stigma casting a dark cloud over baseball, few really gave this historic moment its due– not even Major League Baseball.
Around this time Major League commissioner Bud Selig was in New York, attending a meeting, ironically, about steroid use and its policies. The man whom Bonds surpassed, Hank Aaron, had already stated his poor opinion of Bonds with a congratulatory video, showcasing his obvious disappoint concerning what had transpired.
The historic home run was hit on August 8, in San Francisco, Bonds’ only refuge from the slurs and innuendo. With two months to pad his record beyond reach, few fans would be able to tell you the correct number of home runs the athlete has reached. The number is 762 and counting, yet it’s barely reported in sports media today.
Seven years ago, when Mark McGwire surpassed Roger Maris’ single season home run record of 61, the home run ball fetched 2.7 million at Guerney’s Auction House to an anonymous bidder. This year, the man who caught Bonds’ 756th dinger, New Yorker Matt Murphy, started bidding at 500,000 U.S. Sports in recent years has alienated itself from its fans. Maybe we too often look back on previous eras with nostalgia-after all Shoeless Joe Jackson inspired the movie Field of Dreams primarily because of his exit from baseball as part of the 1919 Black Sox Scandal. To a cynic, baseball will always be tainted by the so-called steroid era it is currently under. While the record books will forever show that Barry Bonds is the homerun king, the history books will tell a different story, exposing the man Bonds really was.
