You're no Babe Ruth.
Aaron didn't cheat to acheive his accomplishments.
You're no Babe Ruth.
Ruth didn't just set the record for most home runs in a carreer. Did Aaron ever come close to the record for home runs in one season?
So what's the record for home runs, by a weirdly bulked-up athlete suspected by some, of taking steroids?
(just wondering)
Ruth did it on hot dogs and beer, Aaron did it on class. What has Bonds got that comes close to either of these titans?
* = Bonds
I remember watching Hank Aaron hit 2 homers in one game, in 1974. My brother probably still has his scoresheet from the game. Everyone was excited about how close he was to the record.
I don't know whether he's a nice person or not, but he was an honest baseball player.
The only issue here is whether records set by people who use steroids should be recognized. The answer is no.
In my youth my brothers and I derived a great deal of pleasure arguing baseball stats, who was the greatest, who was the most interesting, did you like so and so? The most fun home run hitter I ever personally watched was Harmon Killebrew. I understand his drug of choice while on the road was some kind of whiskey. To me that is sort of understandable. My job took me on the road a great deal and many times nights could get long and dull.
Nevertheless, Killebrew hit some beauties that I recall seeing from some box seat my dad took us to at Metropolitan Stadium. He was the first right handed hitter to hit a ball over the roof in Tiger Stadium (I saw that one on TV and recall the image of Rocky Colavito just turning a one-eighty and pointing up). He had two home runs deep into the upper deck in left field at Metropolitan Stadium, and I think only three were ever hit there in the history of that stadium.
One of the home runs I actually saw him hit, I'm pretty sure is still in orbit.
George Will once said in looking at the "greatest" it matters little era to era. You need to look at the other players of the same era as comparison candidates. I thought Will said it best. Ruth was so much larger than life, he was Everest in Kansas. If Bonds or Aaron or Killebrew or any other power hitter, for that matter, want to be Ruthian, let them first go out and set some pitching records that last five or six decades that they can put along side the power records, then they can engage in the comparison game of brag.
I was one of the morons who stupidly thought that if anyone was going top break Ruth's single season record, I wanted it to be Mantle not Maris. I wanted the record to go to a power hitter. Besides, Mantle was likeable and Maris wasn't...so I thought. Question: How many HR's does it take before you are considered a power hitter? Then it turned out in real life that Maris was a true and great family man and one of the nicest guys to play ball in that era. Stupidity can be contageous.
To the extent that Bonds speaks in public, he sounds as dumb as a box of rocks...they ought to call him Rocky. I think it was around 1991 or 1992 that steroids became illegal. They didn't start testing for them seriously until last year. Maybe every record from 1992 on should be printed into the record books using a different color ink.