These old baseball bones feel beaten up and betrayed. A nation turns its lonely eyes to whom?
Mickey Mantle turned out to be a drunk. Joe DiMaggio was not only a skinflint, but a first-class jerk. Good ol' Charlie Hustle, Pete Rose, has been disgraced.
Did you ever see that 1990s movie about Ty Cobb? Don't. It'll make you sick.
Babe Ruth died at 53, looking more like 73, his body spent from decades of boozing and excess. What a role model. And how about Ted Williams' exit? Was that bizarre or what?
What a game.
Randy Johnson, the most acclaimed player in the brief history of the Diamondbacks, remains the most unfriendly soul I have ever encountered in (or out) of a clubhouse, college or pro.
What a guy.
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So, sorry, I cannot work up any outrage for Barry Bonds. No feeling of scandal. No emotion. Nothing.
Baseball has given us far worse moments than Barry Bonds hitting 756 home runs. Or have you forgotten that the 1994 World Series was canceled in the name of a negotiating war among rival millionaires?
Bonds doesn't push the needle on the Uncivilized Behavior meter any worse than did Dave Kingman or Steve Carlton. I'm numb to the nonsense.
The record that no one follows is "Superstar Who Has Most Embarrassed Baseball.''
It'd be too close to call. Steve Garvey would be in the pack, jockeying for space with Rafael Palmeiro, Albert Belle, Jose Canseco and anyone who got caught using a corked bat and played dumb.
Sammy Sosa, anyone?
And that's only the young generation. The old guys among us have our own edition of Baseball's Not So Greatest Moments, from Juan Marichal smashing a bat on John Roseboro's skull to Denny McLain winning 31 games, and then being suspended for stuff that makes Bonds come off as a Boy Scout.
As one of the few baseball fans remaining who was alive and conscious on April 8, 1974, watching NBC as Curt Gowdy called Hank Aaron's 715th home run, I bring the following news:
Aaron was not a widely popular figure. He was Scottie Pippen to Michael Jordan's Willie Mays. Almost nobody wanted Aaron to break Ruth's record, one of such epic proportion that it was almost mythical. It was pure and unchallenged.
Ruth was romance. Aaron was progress. Ruth was cuddly. Aaron was distant. We didn't want to let go of the past.
But now the home run record is so distorted that it makes no sense. Bonds hit 73 home runs in a season. That's absurd. So forgive me if I don't cling to the notion that Aaron's home run record was sacred. It's just that the wrong man has broken it.
Aaron was a credit to the game and a gentleman of the first order, but he was never loved or, in Mantle's case, worshipped. He was not even close in the I-love-that-guy balloting to Mays.
Most of us in 1974 knew little of Aaron because he was rarely on national TV. Why? Because there was so little baseball on national TV. Sometimes you would see Aaron once in an entire season: at the All-Star Game.
It was almost as if Aaron was introduced to America just as he was about to say goodbye, retire, and spend his final days in an awkward role as a Milwaukee Brewers designated hitter.
In '74, the most popular players in baseball were those who wore an Oakland A's mustache — Reggie Jackson, Catfish Hunter, Vida Blue — and maybe Willie Stargell or Brooks Robinson.
Aaron's home run record was considered asterisk-worthy because he amassed 3,966 more at-bats than Ruth. That's almost eight full seasons of at-bats. That statistic got more run than Aaron's impeccable character.
Over the last 33 years, however, we have come to grasp Aaron and his record, in part because he has been a man of honor and dignity. Unlike Mantle, DiMaggio and Rose, he has never let us down.
The baseball poets now have some rewriting to do. Where have you gone Hammerin' Henry, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you, woo, woo, woo.
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