09
How Many Will It Take?
Posted by Eric F. Langborgh on 09 Aug 2007 at 10:43 am
Last night, a day after eclipsing Hank Aaron’s record for most career home runs, Barry Bonds connected again, hitting number 757 deep into the waters of McCovey Cove.
Baseball fans are now speculating at what number Bonds will complete his career. That’s a good first question. But I have a better question, esp. for Bonds’s biggest critics:
Is there a number Bonds will have to achieve before you will recognize him as the all-time Home Run King? Is there a point of achievement at which you will say he has achieved legitimacy?
Here’s a couple of interesting articles that might play into critics thinking. First, in an interesting article from Imagine Sports, “How Aaron would fare in Bonds’ time,” the authors speculate that Hammerin’ Hank would have finished his career with 766 home runs, 11 more than he actually did, if he played at the same time as Bonds. This is a fascinating article well worth your read, esp. these notes from the conclusion:
[I]t does appear that the career patterns of Henry Aaron and Barry Bonds are really not as dissimilar as many claim. As critics frequently have noted, Bonds did indeed increase his HR output later in his career, but the first half of his career was played during a period that was tougher for hitters than [the] beginning stages of Aaron’s.
Nevertheless, Aaron’s best single-season homer output (47 in 1971) occurred at age 37, which corresponds to Bonds hitting 73 in 2001 at age 36. In fact, there is little difference between Aaron’s simulated seasons and the corresponding actual seasons for Bonds — except for that magical 2001 season.
So critics, would 767 be enough to make Bonds’s record legitimate for you?
The second article I want to reference is perhaps the harshest article I have read that tries to evaluate how many home runs were added to Barry Bonds’s total (and thus should be subtracted), assuming that he was a heavy user of such “performance-enhancing” drugs. This article makes claims about the benefits of steroids that seem so far fetched. (And consider this.) Nevertheless, the author of this article, using a series of complex mathematical formulas, concludes that steroid use has added 83 home runs to his career total, and then he decided to tack on another 15 for good measure.
That seems extreme, but some might take this route of thinking. Does Bonds then have to hit 98 more home runs — ending at a total 855 - before you will recognize his record? (Before answering, you might want to first consider my post, “No Asterisk Needed.”)
Or would 800 home runs be enough?
Should he have to pass 868 — the number put up by the great Japanese slugger Sadaharu Oh?
1,000 homers?
Or is there no number high enough to placate you?
And back to the first question, how many home runs do you think Barry Bonds will actually end up with?
Please let us know what you think!
“Is there a number Bonds will have to achieve before you will recognize him as the all-time Home Run King?”
Eric, I think you know what my answer would be — 756. He played as an officially sanctioned player in officially sanctioned league games. Through most of the period in question the things he is accused of doing were not even against the rules, “baseball” (the MLB) knew darn well that large numbers of players were on the juice and did NOTHING about it until Congress turned on the heat. Bonds has the record. Period.
The fact of the matter is, though, that I have a lower opinion of Bonds, as a hitter and as a person, because I strongly suspect that he did, in fact, use steroids to pump up his body and his numbers. regardless of my personal opinion of Bonds, he is the Home Run Record Holder, for whatever that is worth. To try to compute the number of home runs to “subtract” from his total as a result of alleged steroid use is just silliness. How many home runs should we subtract from Aaron’s totals because he played most of the waning years of his career in home run friendly Atlanta (the highest altitude major League park until Colorado came into the league)?
Every player has to be considered in the context of his era. Ruth was the home run king of the transformation of the deadball era into the modern game. In fact, he was a major force in causing that transition. Aaron was the home run king of the mid-20th Century dawn of the offensive era initiated by the lowering of the pitcher’s mound and expansion in 1969. Bonds is the home run king of the steroid era. Bonds holds the record; that doesn’t mean that anyone has to acknowledge him as the greatest home run hitter ever. In my mind, that would still be Ruth, and I suspect that within ten years there will be a few more that will pass his 714 total.
Add A Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.