Samuel L. Jackson on baseball, boxing and golf

Tiger Woods' erstwhile golfing partner is also a big fan of Ultimate Fighting. Steve Grayson/Getty Images

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Don't ask Samuel L. Jackson who the real home run king is. He'll simply laugh and go into one of his many memories of Hank Aaron, who held the title of Major League Baseball's all-time leader until Barry Bonds broke the 33-year-old record on Tuesday night.

"It'll always be Hank Aaron," said Jackson, who attended Morehouse College in Atlanta near the end of Aaron's career. "I used to work at the old Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium when Hank Aaron was playing, so I remember those dog days of summer. I worked at the stadium when I was in college and they had Chief Noc-A-Homa out there coming out of the tent like when Hank would hit a home run and homeboy would do a little dance."

I caught up with Jackson in Los Angeles to talk about Bonds' milestone; playing golf with Tiger Woods and portraying legendary boxer Bob Satterfield in the upcoming film Resurrecting the Champ.

SI.com: What are your thoughts on Barry Bonds becoming the new home run king? Do you think it's tainted, the record at all?

Jackson: Guilty, innocent, whatever, you know? Barry still hit the ball out of the park. The ball's been hit out of the park that many times by this particular guy, so they can put asterisks by the record if they want to, or whatever, but it doesn't change the fact that he did it. The whole performance-enhancing thing in sports, everybody's been looking for an inch forever. I remember when Ben Johnson just dusted Carl Lewis' ass [at the 1988 Summer Olympics]. Everybody was like, "Damn! What was that?" You know, because homeboy just jumped up out of the blocks and stood straight up and pow! What the [expletive] was that? All of a sudden it was like, "Oh, he was taking something." It was like, "OK, so now we've got this going on." Then the Chinese women's soccer team came over and dogged the Americans saying, "Those babes have mustaches." We have all kinds of [stuff] going on.

Look man, why don't we just have enhancement games? Why not? Let's just see how far you [guys] can go with this. You know, get on it! Bust it and let's see what happens! Go for it because I remember when football players were juicing it, [dudes] were getting lit up on the field. We were all like, "Damn! What is this? He's a monster!" Then it's, "Oh, he's on the juice." Oh, really? Oh, OK, cool. It still makes good football games. So maybe we should all have some enhancement games. Go ahead and do that. Start a whole new league and stuff. Go for it!

SI.com: You're supposed to be playing Bob Satterfield in Resurrecting the Champ. Were you able to speak to any members of Satterfield's family about the role?

Jackson: My wife met them somewhere, which is kind of really bizarre. It was an accident, at some party or something. This guy goes to her, "I hear your husband is playing my father and my uncle wants to come see the movie." Sometimes we don't talk about what I'm doing. My wife will ask me what the movie's about and I'll say, "Uh, you don't want to know yet." I won't tell her. They want to come to the premiere, so we're actually making arrangements for them, but I didn't have any conversations with them before I did the film.

SI.com: Did you do anything to prepare for the role of a homeless former champion?

Jackson: Well, I didn't go spend the night on the streets. The hardest part was finding his voice, in terms of who he was and the space he was in. How he felt about going from this very high place that he said he'd actually been in to this very low place where he is now, where he kind of still has a level of celebrity among the people who are around him. Everybody knows who Champ is and he's there. He's in this really weird place where these kids come to bum fight him, but he hadn't reached the level of anger and frustration with them that he was willing to fight back.

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