Wednesday, August 8, 2007

Congratulations To Barry Bonds

This is probably going to surprise a lot of people....hell I'm surprising myself right now. With Ming on vacation and unable to post I have no choice but to be the one to post on historic HR # 756 in the career of Barry Bonds.



Readers accustomed to my Bonds hating material brace yourself:
I would like to start off by saying congratulations to Barry Bonds. Regardless of all of the steroid talk and suspicions you have to be one hell of a player to hit 756 HRs and I hold him to be the best player in the last 50 years of the game to either use or not use steroids. Look, I don't particularly like him as a person or a player, but that doesn't matter because like him or not, legitimate or not, he is baseball's new home run king.

While Selig wasn't there (because he's a giant baby) Mays was and along with his family the whole ceremony deal was pretty nice. I love Hank Aaron's congratulations to Barry Bonds after the home run was hit. I believe it exemplifies the class of Hank Aaron, and no matter what Bonds did or didn't do regarding steroids, Aaron will forever be respected for his performance and class.

Does this bother a lot of baseball fans (myself included)? Yes, it does. Does Bonds' mark deserve an asterisk next to it? I don't really know. It would make a lot of fans who don't like Bonds happier. However, I feel like fans will surely keep debating which slugger they consider the true home run champion. Bonds fans will say Bonds. Some will continue to cling to Aaron while other, older rooters will always say it's Babe Ruth.

There are plenty of fans,myself included, already hoping for the day that Bonds' total (whatever it is) gets beat. Rodriguez may have the best chance, with his 500 home runs at age 32 far ahead of Bonds' pace. For now, however, Mr. Bonds will reign supreme in the world of the longball.

Congratulations....It's over....now let's try to move on.

3 comments:

bpl said...

I wasn't surprised you posted on it. You've actually posted more on Bonds more than Ming...

anyway, had I caught the ball I would've whipped out a Sharpie, wrote an asterisk the ball, and gave it back to Bonds for free.

twins15 said...

Yeah, regardless of how anyone feels about Bonds, and whether the record is "tainted" or not, it's still a fantastic accomplishment.

grittysquirrels said...

Bryan....the element of surpise was more directed toward the fact that i decided against freaking out and doing the whole anti-bonds "the day that baseball died" kind of thing that my frequently vocalized opinions would suggest.