There's A New Home Run Champion of All-Time...and It's Barry Bonds

Barry Bonds hit his 756th home run to pass Hank Aaron as baseball's all-time home run king. Now you'd probably expect that a baseball purist like me would be sickened by this development, but I'm really not.

Note: If you don't think Barry Bonds took steroids please stop reading right now. You probably are having trouble reading this anyway, with having to sound out the words. Barry Bonds cheated, there is no way to logically dispute this.

First off, no, Bonds clearly does not deserve to be remembered as the all-time leader in home runs. But in sports and in life, a lot of times people don't get what they deserve, and they don't deserve things they get. It's not worth worrying about.

There's no justice, there's just us. A pithy statement that is true in this case. Bonds can't ruin the historical signifigance of baseball, only we can. Baseball is unique among sports because of its history and the majesty of its records. And its two most precious records have been tainted (officially) but they don't have to be tainted in our hearts, our minds and our memories.

The two players I heard about most growing up were Willie Mays and Sandy Koufax. Neither holds any significant career or season record. That doesn't matter. It's their greatness that inspired stories of them to be told and passed down through the generations.

And it is up to us to pass down the story of Barry Bonds (and Mark McGwire is not blameless in this) and to tell our children that he cheated the game, and that he stole from Hank Aaron (and McGwire from Roger Maris).

And someday Bonds will be proven as a cheat and at that time let's hope baseball has a commissioner with enough stones to wipe his records from the books.