Described as “one of the really great men in the history of sports and one of the really great men in our nation”s history,” Henry Aaron is your all-time major league home run champion.
In a perfect world, it would stay that way.
But the planet Pluto is not as far away as perfect is from today”s major league baseball world.
As it exists today, fait accompli is that Barry Bonds will surpass Aaron”s career total of 755 home runs sometime next season. The same Barry Bonds who within the month will be indicted for perjury for denying his use of steroids to a grand jury and the FBI. Ratted out by his ex-friend and business manager Steve Hoskins and ex-mistress Kimberly Bell, both bent on getting even with the souped-up slugger, the likelihood of Bonds being found guilty of lying under oath is strong.
Given the fact that MLB, through its greed, was all but a handmaiden to the advent of the steroid home run-hitting monster, it is powerless to punish Bonds beyond a short suspension if he is found guilty. Ultimately, it will have to live with its tainted record-holder.
The likes of Bonds replacing Aaron at the top is an abomination.
— Ugliness would replace graciousness. Aaron”s words after hitting the home run that broke Babe Ruth”s career record of 714 in April 1974: “Now I consider myself one of the best. Maybe not the best, because a lot of great ones have played this game ? DiMaggio, Mays, Jackie Robinson ? but I think I can fit in there somehow.” Bonds is best-known and most oft-repeated quote, used when demanding something, “What, do I (expletive) stutter?”
— A monster would replace a man. Between the last game of the ?98 season and the spring training ?99, Bonds morphed from a rangy all-round athlete to a being that teammates laughingly called “The Hulk.” Was it coincidental, Bonds exploded with five subsequent seasons in which he hit 45 or more home runs, topped by his single-season record 73 in 2001. Aaron, in contrast, had workmanlike numbers, hitting 20 or more home runs in 20 straight seasons.
I interviewed Aaron only once. Thanks to the ABC television network, it is an interview that lives in infamy. It was toward the conclusion of the ?73 season as Hank was edging up on Ruth with the consequences of a media frenzy in the Atlanta Braves clubhouse at just about every National League stop. The advance word as Aaron”s Braves came to San Francisco was that a couple of his teammates publicly bitched about the distraction. With little chance to talk to Hank as he jumped in and out of the batting cage in pregame hitting practice at Candlestick Park, I bluntly asked him about the clubhouse controversy.
“What contro-versy!?” he snapped.
Later that night, I watched this exchange with Hank on Bay Area television, which cut short the subsequent interview in which Aaron was at ease and amicable with me. Worse, I have watched the same sports hack get the same reaction from Aaron on ABC”s national magazines (“Prime Time,” etc.) a few times in the 30-odd years since then whenever Aaron”s home run campaign became the subject. That”s me, the guy with the wanna-be sideburns in the era of “mutton chops” edging into picture from the right. Usually, ABC uses the take to illustrate the media part of how difficult it was for Hank while he closed in on Ruth”s 30-year-old mark.
But it was difficult. Even Ruth”s widow scorned him. There were racial taunts ? Aaron was the last player to come to the majors from the Negro leagues ? hate mail and death threats. Hank, like Bonds, got to know the FBI. But under radically different circumstances. Hit during the civil rights movement, his 715th was written about as “the home run that changed America.” A black man now owned one of sport”s most precious records.
Aaron took a far different approach to the game than Bonds. Home run champion that he was, he played in the shadow of Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente, Mickey Mantle and Frank Robinson. Fans in San Francisco and New York, in particular, maybe everywhere, wanted the boyish, demonstrative, feel-good Mays to be the home run champion.
Then, there was the ballpark issue. Aaron hit more than half his career home runs while playing in the “launch pad” that was Fulton County Stadium, the Braves” home park, so called because it was 1,000 feet above sea level ? the highest elevation before Denver joined the N.L. Mays, it is still argued today, would have hit 800 home runs if not for Candlestick Park with its torrential winds that particularly hampered right-handed hitters. With those Candlestick breezes whipping them along, hot dog wrappers came up to the plate and into the batter”s eyes faster than fastballs before Candlestick was enclosed in 1971.
Bonds never liked playing second banana to anyone. Play fair and there”s nothing wrong with that. But his jealousy of the attention showered on equally pumped up Mark McGwire was an impetus for his taking the ?roid route.
Well, one thing is sure ? Bonds is the show now and will become even more so later this month.
Barry could take a step toward making it a better baseball world by retiring at the end of this season. Not going to Seattle to extend his career as a designated hitter and break Aaron”s record would be a noble act that might shine a more noble light on him. Never mind Ruth, whose career total Bonds passed earlier this season. Ruth played a different sport. One with a deader ball through much of it, one with players of only one color and from only one country, one before the era of long and short relief pitchers, and one in which players were not necessarily athletes ? least of all the overweight, often besotted Babe.
Sad thing about Barry. Perhaps no player in history ever worked as strenuously to excel as this man known to shed involuntary tears during his excruciatingly arduous workouts. Maybe, like Jason Giambi, if he had just been honest. And maybe without the clear and the cream and all that, he might have challenged Aaron”s record anyway.
Sadder still, we”ll never know.
Editor”s note: John Lindblom is a former Bay Area beat reporter who now covers sports for the Record-Bee.
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