756!

Posted by Eric F. Langborgh on 08 Aug 2007 at 07:45 am

He did it! With one momentous and violent crack of the bat, Barry Bonds sent a specially-marked commemorative baseball soaring deep into the right field stands of San Francisco’s beautiful ballpark last night, thus giving Bonds 756 home runs and the new record. Hank Aaron appeared on video minutes later, showing the class and dignity that marked his whole glorious career, to ceremoniously pass the torch as Home Run King, after carrying it so well for 33 years.

Many people, esp. in the media but also true blue baseball fans across the nation, lost sleep loathing the thought of this day arriving. I — another true blue baseball fan — lost sleep only because I stayed up the last several games to make sure I saw Bonds tie and then eclipse the record. They bemoaned the thought of an unworthy man holding the greatest record in all of sports. I cheered, because I choose to recognize greatness and history. Like all players, Bonds’s accomplishment will carry an asterisk — an unofficial one. In time, he will be judged against the rest of baseball’s greats given the variables of the context of each of their times. And so, his feat and place in the pantheon of baseball immortals will be debated in bars, living rooms, ball parks, and around the barbecue forevermore, and different people will reach different conclusions. This is as it should be, and is one of many reasons that baseball is such a great sport and has rightfully been called the national pastime. So, some will see 756 only with a great big asterisk after it. I rather think it deserves an exclamation point.

Much will be written about Barry Bonds and 756 in the coming days. But for now, I leave readers with a number of things that I have written or otherwise posted to the Borg Blog on the subject: