Taken out of the ball game

Chuck Klosterman has a good column today on Page 2 (and in the upcoming issue of ESPN the Magazine) about the problem with Barry Bonds' chase of Babe Ruth. He notes that Bonds' numbers are "as colossal as they are meaningless." I agree with most of what he writes; Barry Bonds is, or at least was, a phenomenal player with or without steroids, but it seems difficult to argue that he deserves to be considered one of the two best power hitters who ever lived. Of course, aside from Ruth, many of the biggest numbers were racked up by hitters who owed them at least in some measure to longevity. This is true of Bonds as well to some degree, but his major power, the kind that has driven him into rarefied Ruthian air, didn't hit until he was 35. That year (2000), Bonds hit 49 home runs, and he has not hit fewer than 45 in a full season since; he had only hit that many once in 14 previous seasons. Of his 708 home runs, 263 have come since the age of 35.

On the other hand, Hank Aaron hit 47 home runs (a career high) in 1971 at the age of 37, and you're not going to find anyone accusing him of taking steroids. I'm not saying Bonds didn't take steroids - it seems virtually certain at this point that he did - but as Klosterman himself notes, there's no real way to know what the effects of steroids, if any, are on number of home runs. In 1973, at 39, Aaron still hit 40 home runs; this is not suspicious, yet Bonds' 45 at the same age in 2004 are preposterous? Aaron was fortunate not to break down as quickly or easily as many other players of his time; perhaps Bonds would have in the absence of steroids, but then again maybe he would not have. The real problem is that we will never know.

I don't intend this as a defense of Bonds; I think he's pretty much a loathsome human being and it's possible that not even Roger Maris was this unpopular a choice to surpass Babe Ruth. What I'm doing here is agreeing with Klosterman. What Bonds, or perhaps simply the steroid era, has done is throw a haze over all record-keeping in general. The fact that we can point to historical precedent for many of Bonds' accomplishments just throws things into further disarray. We don't want to trust Bonds' numbers because of steroids, and yet we're not sure whether they're that off. Ultimately, the biggest problem is Bonds' personality; this is not the kind of guy you want chasing a beloved record. As Klosterman points out, he has all but stated he doesn't care about the game of baseball; I do disagree with Klosterman when he suggests that Bonds doesn't care about his own legacy, though. To the contrary, I think that that is all Bonds cares about. I think he will be less bothered by retiring without a World Series ring - as he will - than perhaps any player in history. For Bonds, it's about piling up the numbers. It always was; why else would he have turned to steroids in the first place when he was already one of the two or three greatest players of his generation at worst? If you take books like Game of Shadows as gospel, Bonds appears to have felt that he could substitute raw numbers for admiration. People liked McGwire and Sosa; no one (with the possible exception of Giants fans) likes Bonds, but you can't ignore 73, or 715.

And that's the problem. Records shouldn't just be about the numbers. They should be about the years of compilation, the players trying to get championships at the same time, the fans with them every step of the way. To Bonds, records are the numbers, and barging his way to the top of the charts is the only thing he needs to cement his legacy. Never mind that he could get to 800 home runs and he'd still be one of the five least popular players in history at this point; his name is up there and you can't say anything to him. It's depressingly clinical, and that's the point Klosterman's really getting at - numbers compiled in this way just don't mean anything. Where's the motivation to care? But Bonds' position in, most likely, no worse than second place all-time means you can't discuss the all-time home run leaders without mentioning him - and who on earth wants to do that? We always wondered if you could really compare statistics across eras; now we find out that even if you can, doing so is just depressing.

Another baseball post coming later.