Bonds 756!

Finally Bonds did what he was supposed to this year - surpass the home run mark. As expected, it happened at home. The Giants and the home fans put on a show. Ironically the ball ended up in the hands of a Mets fan who was in the crowd wearing a Mets jersey. Apparently he was on his way to Australia. Go figure. The game stopped for a long time for the ceremony. His entire family and Willie Mays were there as usual. The big surprise was a message from Hank Aaron on the jumbo-tron. There was a lot of talk about Hank not being there. But the classy Aaron sent the message and enhanced his image more than anything. Bud Selig also called Barry after the game and congratulated him. He was not at the game for some reason. Should have been busy working on the all-important Devil Rays-Pirates inter-league schedule for next year.

The guy who gave up the home run, Mike Bacsik, gave a real cute interview after the game. He seems like a genuine kid who had no problems giving up the record breaker. He tipped his cap towards Bonds during the game. He later said he wanted to challenge him and he also met him afterwards to congratulate him and got an autographed bat from Bonds. Apparently this guy's dad has pitched to Bond's dad and also pitched to Aaron when he was at 755. Barry wished this kid well in his presser. Bonds was also all praise for John Lannon, yesterday's starting pitcher, who not only challenged Bonds, but actually overpowered him. All in all, a great day for Bonds. There were a couple of questions about the "taint" and the controversy which Bonds summarily dismissed. He was clearly irritated by those questions and he said "this record is not tainted, period".

Bonds had a great story for the local TV audience in the Bay Area in one of their shows. There was a very memorable at-bat he had against Eric Gagne in 2004. Bottom of the ninth, Barry comes to the plate trailing 3-0 with Gagne trying to close the game for the Dodgers. They went one-on-one, pure gas versus bat-speed. He got one pretty good which just hooked foul. That was a 98 MPH fast ball. Then Bonds planted a 100 MPH pitch in about the same spot where he hit 756 today. Bonds told the story today that he and Eric had met in the past and they had this deal where Eric agreed to challenge Bonds if he faced him with a lead of 3 runs or more. Thats exactly what happened on that day in 2004 and everybody got to witness it.

With all this said, one cannot but smell the "asterix" in the air. Ironically, I was kind of OK with Bonds chasing the record and was not too bothered by him even surpassing the great Hank Aaron. But the "taint" hit me today when the Giants did sort of a tribute to the top 10 home run leaders - Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Sammy Sosa, Frank Robinson, Mark McGwire, Harmon Killebrew, Rafael Palmeiro and Ken Griffey, Jr. There are 5 guys from the current "era" and thats just way too many from one era. 3 of them are clearly tainted - McGwire, Palmeiro and Sosa. One possibly clean guy - Griffey and the other - Bonds, definitely tainted, but might be in the top 10 anyways. This is when it hit me that Mays and Aaron and Robinson and those guys should be really pissed. A lifetime of hard-work on their part is being erased left and right by a bunch of roid-heads from our era and nobody did anything until recently. Baseball collectively failed it's heroes and it's a crying shame. The real victims are the fans and the true legends of the game who are all being replaced by fake superstars.

Like I said, Bonds probably belongs in the top 10 list anyways, but he definitely doesn't break Aaron's record without the juice. He probably doesn't even get to Willie's 660 without Greg Anderson. Only thing we could say for sure about Bonds is, he was a first-ballot hall-of-famer with or without Balco, but all his home-run marks are definitely question marks. Bob Costas made this point that people are just wrong when they say that Bonds was the best player alive even in 1998 and so the steroids don't matter. Bonds was a first-ballot hall-of-famer even in 1998, but Costas says nobody was even talking about him in terms of all-time great players. In fact, he was not even in the all-century team and was not even in the top 2 or 3 notable misses in that team. So his home run numbers since 2000 definitely took him from "phenomenal" to the "super-human". Bonds hit more home runs after he turned 35 than Roger Marris hit his entire career. Enough said!

The post-steroids Bonds became one of the greatest hitters of all time and the jump he recorded in almost every offensive category after he turned 35 is other-worldly. A player who was already playing at a hall-of-fame level, got much better - almost 40% to 50% better, after he turned 35 years old. It's just unheard of. How do you explain that without some cream and the clear?