Season of '73 (Stuck in Your Craw)

Sixty home runs is "Hot News" in any baseball season; it no longer makes history. Yet, the powers that be - the media - want everyone to buy into what they call Aaron Judge's "historic pursuit" of Roger Maris' American League record 61 home runs. Maris broke Babe Ruth's record of 60 home runs 61 years ago. Closets to half-century later, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa surpassed Maris' mark with 70 and 66 home runs, respectively. A couple of years later, Barry Bonds hit 73, establishing a new Major League record. 

Today, the sports media would have us speak in hushed tones of what is left of Maris' mark, so hallowed his 61 has once again become. they are even amazed and saddened that we do not all feel as they do about their nonsensical crusade to elevate a bygone standard to its former glory. Some go so far as to suggest that when Judge finally passes Maris's total, Judge's final homer mark should be declared the new Major League record. (Not even Judge believes that.)

What is wrong with these people? They never spoke of the National League home run record during the reign of Ruth and Maris. Suddenly, the American League record deserves distinction? 

The Baseball Writers of America have thus far succeeded n keeping Barry Bonds out of baseball's Hall of Fame. They cannot, however, change the facts of what he accomplished. Because the home run record is pre-eminent among baseball records - among all sports records - Bonds is, as they say, "stuck in their craw." His shadow pervades a "Hall" that they will not let him enter. Their public relations campaign to diminish his work fizzles by the day. Aaron Judge provides them with a foil, but he too is wary of their antics. By his reactions to their petty goadings, I wonder why he does not regard such propagandists as fools. 

Sarah Spain, pundit on ESPN's "Around the Horn" tried to explain to her colleagues that many people are unsure whether Bond's actually cheated, while others wonder whether Judge has not cheated, himself. (He has 60 home runs. The next closest hitters have around 40.)

Sarah is right. At the time of McGwire and Sosa, we cheered them on, unsuspecting that something could be amiss. (Something could always be amiss.) We cheered Bonds with the same innocence. We cheered them all, as we cheer them today. How could we know they may have been using banned substances? Incidentally, many of these men associated with baseball's "steroid's era" deny having ever used steroids. Many, including Bonds and Roger Clemens, never tested positive for a banned substance. They are held in suspicion based mainly upon hearsay testimony, and innuendo. 

No one can be absolutely sure about players in a league like baseball whose long history of cheating includes corked bats, spitballs, amphetamines (called "greenies"), sign-stealing, etc. For all we know, Babe Ruth, himself, may have cheated. Only in our faith can we find certainty. 

Ms. Spain, with her astute observations, has thrown a life jacket to her floundering colleagues. They refuse to see. In their zeal to project a pre-supposed purity that, in baseball has never existed, they inadvertently reveal the bias and hypocrisy in their own hearts.  

Barry Bonds, like it or not, is the all-time home run king - for a season (73); for a career (762). No one has hit like Barry. Recently, they booed Toronto pitchers for repeatedly walking Aaron Judge, rather than giving him something good to hit. For the season, Judge has accumulated about 100 walks. In one season, alone, Bonds was walked over 230 times - 120 of those were intentional passes - so feared was his bat. 

Bond captured our imaginations, similar to how Mike Tyson captured the imagination of this country, and the world. Such energy cannot be planned. It happens, like a "Big Bang." Neither Bonds' nor Tyson's moment lasted long, but they left indelible marks upon those who bore witness.  

I was there. I saw Bonds standing at the plate with the eye of an eagle, inscrutably watching pitches go by. Then, suddenly, with a mere flick of his wrists, he would launch a baseball into the ocean - beyond Candlestick Park, into that corner of the Pacific known as "McCovey Cove".  

Bonds was like the "Mighty Casey" of poetic legend, in the flesh. The sports talking heads cannot erase that; we saw it for ourselves. More to the point, other major leaguers saw - generations that included Aaron Judge in his pre-adolescence; staying up late school nights just to see Bonds work. Now, the 30-year-old Judge - the current apex predator of baseball (along with the phenom Shohei Ohtani) - defies the defiers by barely blinking at Maris' record, knowing in his heart that only Bonds' 73 is worthy of the note they desperately seek to bestow upon his eclipsing of what is essentially a Yankee team standard. 

Despite the muddle, about this, there is no doubt: Barry Bonds holds the golden chalice, thus says the official archives of Major League Baseball. Aaron Judge, as of this writing is 13 home runs behind with eight games remaining on the schedule. Swing away, fair prince. Here comes a high hard one. Swing away.