Late Tuesday night, Barry Bonds hit the 756th home run of his baseball career over the 421ft mark in AT&T Park's right-center field, surpassing Hank Aaron as the all-time Major League leader. The mark he now holds is one of the game's most hallowed, passing first from George Herman "Babe" Ruth, the last American athlete into transubstantiate directly into myth, to Aaron, whose 715th homer was both a powerful symbol of achievement for African-Americans in and out of baseball, and a defeat for the bigotry and intimidation he personally endured as he chased Ruth's ghost. Bonds' 756th home run should have been a rarefied moment of triumph; an occasion for the game of baseball to once again assert its claim as our national pastime, an opportunity for the fans to witness a piece of history inextricable from the larger American narrative, and a chance to take the full measure of Barry Bonds, who, by the numbers, now belongs in the same pantheon as not only Ruth and Aaron, but Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, Ted Williams, and Bonds' own godfather, Willie Mays. The greatest of the great.
Of course, you don't need me to tell you why this chain of events failed to unfold.
Bonds' name, instead of a synonym for the pinnacle of athletic success, is now emblematic of the pessimism of our times, the unyielding creep of cynicism and corruption into our most sacred public institutions. His accusers, which by now number the vast majority of the media, as well as most fans of the game of baseball, point to the vast mountains of circumstantial evidence: the amazing changes to his physique, the unprecedented increase in his power production so late in his career, his close associations with individuals caught up in the federal Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative (BALCO) steroids case, and his leaked grand jury testimony in that same proceeding wherein he seems to tacitly admit using performance enhancers. Such is the case against Bonds that many of his staunchest defenders are now ceding that, yes, perhaps he took steroids,
- but so did Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa when they were chasing down Roger Maris' single season home run mark (a mark Bonds now holds with 73 HRs) in 1998, and no one seems to care about that.
- but some of the pitchers probably did too, so Bonds' steroids use didn't constitute an unfair advantage.
- but the game of baseball enabled, and perhaps encouraged him, eager to profit off of Bonds' own individual achievements as well as a concurrent increase in home run production throughout the league.
- but baseball is only entertainment anyway, and why should we care what Bonds' did so long as we were entertained?
- but we, the fans, are guilty as well for willfully blinding ourselves to the fact that Bonds' achievements, and the achievements of so many other players, were impossible without steroids and performance enhancing drugs.
This is by turns pathetic and repugnant. Bonds' ultimate guilt or innocence remains debatable; neither I, nor anyone else I know of, possesses definitive proof that he used steroids. What oughtn't be debatable is whether or not Bonds, if he did in fact cheat, tarnished both his own legacy as well as the mark he now holds. Indeed, the intent of Bonds' defenders appears to not only to rationalize Bonds hypothetical steroids use, but to create a set of conditions allowing, and perhaps encouraging us to accept and celebrate his dubious achievement. In doing so, of course, they manage to sidestep the inconvenient fact that Bonds, if he cheated, robbed Hank Aaron both of his record, and the potential opportunity to watch it surpassed under more auspicious circumstances. Instead of allowing us to fondly recall Aaron's achievement and celebrate the dignified Hall of Famer once more, Bonds' Road to 756 was effectively a death watch, an event characterized more by a sense of leaden inevitability than any real anticipation. The clock struck midnight at 11:56 pm EST on August 7th, 2007, and the nation, whose pastime baseball professes to be, let out a collective sigh and went back to sleep, if it was awake in the first place.
It has been reported in various news accounts that President Bush, an avid baseball fan and former team owner, placed a congratulatory phone call to Mr. Bonds on Wednesday afternoon. That Bush should find himself in the awkward position of embracing Bonds is apt; if the President is most responsible for the ethos of corruption, cynicism and moral expediency that informs America's experience of the 21st century, then surely Barry Bonds is one of its most visible standard bearers. I don't mean to suggest that the continuing assault on the rule of law and the bloody morass in Iraq are equivalent to the fall of a mere sporting record; the Bush gang's crimes are far too grave to be so trivialized. However, they are of a piece, enabled by the same capacity for moral flexibility and self-justification that allows men to decide that since the rules do not conform to their desires, this alone is ample proof that the rules are defective and should be disregarded. Thus cancer spreads.
There are no do-overs in life; just like you can't take miles off the odometer by driving in reverse, you can't go from Bonds' 756 to Aaron's 755. Barry Bonds is now baseball's all-time home run king; whether he did or didn't use steroids is irrelevant to this fact. What matters most is how we choose to internalize this moment; whether or not we are intellectually honest with ourselves about what it signifies.
On Wednesday night, in the rubber game of a three game set with the Washington Nationals, Bonds hit his 757th home run, guaranteeing that it will take at least one more at-bat for the next guy to catch him.
