BARRY BONDS: do you want him to succeed or fail?

By Rick Speciale - Feature Writer
05/26/2007

Barry Bonds is sure to break the Major League Baseball career homerun record in the next month or two. Just last year, I thought he was finished and hoped that he would fail. The current record holder, Hank Aaron, was a model citizen and true professional whereas Bonds is all that seems wrong with the sport. He is an egotistical “me first” player who turns people off and supposedly cheats with steroids.

But now he is back to putting the ball out of the park with regularity. Even if successful, he is not the best player of all time. Take a look at these career stats (as of March 2007) comparing Bonds with a player many consider the greatest of all time, Babe Ruth:

Career Average: Ruth beats Bonds .342 to .299
Career Slugging: Ruth beats Bonds .690 to .608
Career On-Base %: Ruth beats Bonds .474 to .443
Career OPS: Ruth beats Bonds 1.164 to 1.051
At Bats per HR: Ruth beats Bonds 11.76 to 12.95
RBI per Game: Ruth beats Bonds 0.89 to 0.67
Runs per Game: Ruth beats Bonds 0.87 to 0.75

I found these stats in this article that made additional compelling points as an excellent read. In case you did not know, Babe Ruth was also a great pitcher, not just a great hitter!

What a privilege it would have been to see Ruth. I was not fortunate enough to be alive when he played. He will always be the gold standard in the sport. Many athletes today strive towards this achievement. This video of Jose Canseco talks to this point in a frank and honest interview about his own steroids use as well as the context for other players to do so.
While Canseco is honest, players like Raphael Palmeiro won’t come clean as I wrote in this piece. Note that weeks after this video, he later tested positive after denying any use!

Taking performance enhancing drugs is not just a problem today. A great book titled ‘Ball Four‘, written by Jim Bouton, details how former players such as the legendary Mickey Mantle took Amphetamines, a substance which is still abused by athletes in order to maintain endurance.

We pay money to see athletes perform – and win. Do we care about what they do to their bodies? Don’t we just care about winning? Isn’t it all about results?

Today, I decided to be selfish. Who cares if Bonds took Steroids or not? Who cares if he is a jerk? I want to say I was alive to see the greatest homerun hitter in baseball history.