Bonds, Bombs, & Blowhard Baseball

I don’t like baseball. I never have. I find it an extremely boring sport with to long a season and relatively few interesting characters. But you know what I love…HOMERUNS. The only time I will watch a baseball game is when Barry Bonds is up to bat. The only time I won’t turn sportscenter from a baseball segment is when they are showing homerun highlights. Like the dunk in basketball, the homerun is the signature excitement phenomenon in its sport. It is the game changer, the energizer the crowd pleaser.

The irony of the homerun in baseball and the treatment of Barry Bonds in particular, as he is about to break the all-time record of Hank Aaron, is that it is the homerun that brought baseball back in the late 1990’s.

For those of you with a short term memory, in 1994 there was a strike in Major League Baseball. The strike lasted 232 days and many pundits were theorizing at the time that baseball would simply die. Upon its return in 1995 the enthusiasm just wasn’t there for the fans, particularly the casual fan, anymore. But baseball tumbled along. It tumbled along that is until 1998. In 1998 the homerun battle of the century occurred as Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa battled to the wire not just to see who had the most homeruns in a season but to see who had the most homeruns EVER!

Near the end of the year it seemed that every television station, talkshow and newspaper, sports or non-sports, was talking about this historic battle. Attendance skyrocketed and even I, the baseball hater, was watching the games on TV. In fact this phenomenal chase landed bother McGwire and Sosa a spot on Sports Illustrated as the “Sportsmen of the Year” with the quote:

“McGwire and Sosa gave America a summer that won’t be forgotten: a summer of stroke and counterstroke, of packed houses and curtain calls, of rivals embracing and gloves in the bleachers and adults turned into kids — the Summer of Long Balls and Love. It wasn’t just the lengths they went to with bats in their hands. It was also that they went to such lengths to conduct the great home run race with dignity and sportsmanship, with a sense of joy and openness. Never have two men chased legends and each other that hard and that long or invited so much of America onto their backs for the ride.” - Gary Smith

Baseball was revitalized, pre-strike interest restored, and many people made alot of money in the sport based upong the powerful bats of Sosa and McGwire.

My, my, how things have changed. As Barry Bonds is on the precipice of obliterating the all time homerun record the league is suffering the steriods hang over and disrespecting Bonds in the process. Even though steriods was never listed as a banned substance in the Majors, wide nets of condemnation and castigation have been spread, primarily targeted at the big bat bomb boys of Sosa, McQwire and Bonds. It was never proven, only alleged and speculated. It was not illegal (in baseball) only frowned upon.

In the case of McQwire and Sosa to a greater extent and to Barry Bonds, when he hit his 73, to a lessor, their big bats put baseball back upon the map. It was not the dink hitters like Tony Gwynn that fans returned to the ballpark to see but the big bat boys. The homerun hitters brought the fans back. But it is those same fans that now spit upon the names of McGwire, Sosa, and Bonds for ‘allegedly’ cheating. The irony is this, many of those same fans would have NEVER returned to the game had it not been for those same individuals they now accuse and condemn of cheating to hit homeruns. It was those ‘alleged’ cheaters that restored prominent national attention back to the post-strike baseball.

This is why I find baseball, baseball writers and many of the fans a bunch of hypocritical blowhards. My hope is that Barry not only breaks the record but hits 800 homeruns. I will be watching each at bat that I can and when Barry is done I will turn the TV off and never again return to baseball.

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