A New Home Run King

Barry Bonds finally did it. He is now the all-time home run king. It was really something to see last night. I had the game on last night in the background while I worked on other things. I just happened to look over when he hit it. It was probably the biggest thing in sports that I've seen.

Now, a lot of people say this record is tainted because they believe Barry Bonds used performance enhancing drugs. He may or may not have, but we have to look at the facts here.

Steroids didn't even become illegal to use in baseball until 2002. Bonds had 567 home runs BEFORE the 2002 season. So even if he did use steroids before 2002, it wasn't a banned substance yet.

The next thing is, steroids do not make your make your hand-eye coordination better, it doesn't give you bat speed, it doesn't make your reflexes better. The only things steroids can do is make you stronger and able to recover faster from working out.

The last thing you need to see is that baseball has ALWAYS been a cheaters sport. It's always been a fact that teams try to steal signs from the other team, so they know what pitches will be thrown, if someone will be stealing a base, etc. Then there's the dirty tricks like going hard into a base to break up a double play, running into the catcher to try to knock the ball loose, and Ty Cobb was infamous for trying to run his spikes into the player trying to tag him out at a base. Pitchers have been accused and caught "doctoring" baseballs and using "foreign substances", recently we experienced this with our very own Kenny Rogers last year in the World Series. Batters have corked their bats including our Norm Cash who admitted using one during the 1961 season when he batted .361. Home teams have let their grass grow longer than normal so they can take advantage of a "slow" infield. So leave the sport alone! Yes, steroids are bad and illegal. We've taken steps to correct that, players get tested and suspended. Barry Bonds is innocent until proven guilty, and even if he is proven guilty the record won't be taken away from him. 756 home runs is a lot, you have to work very hard and be lucky enough to stay healthy to get even close to this. I'm not a big Barry Bonds fan, I'm not a big Alex Rodriguez fan, or Tom Glavine, or Craig Biggio, or Cal Ripken, or Pete Rose... But what these players have done is incredible and they deserve respect.

On a lighter note, I just dug up Barry Bonds' rookie card to check it's value and was surprised to see how much skinnier he actually was in 1986.