Hail to the homer

The round-tripper has taken a beating, but it's still No. 1

MILWAUKEE -- This is a great concept, this Home Run Derby. You get a few sluggers, and throw them some lollipop fastballs. They blast them to smithereens, slamming them into the upper decks, off the facades, bouncing them off the scoreboard. And you televise it, live, in prime time.

You make it a competition, even, show some other players smiling and laughing on the sidelines and, voila, you have yourself a testosterone-pumped pseudo-event.

It's just an exhibition before baseball's biggest exhibition -- a kind of pre-exhibition, really -- but it's made to look like the most important piece of hitting since Ted Williams' .406 in 1941.

Who says baseball has no clue what the fans want?

Baseball's Home Run Derby once again blasted its way onto center stage and the small screen Monday night. For a couple of hours or so, as baseballs flew out of Milwaukee's Miller Park like so much doubletalk from Bud Selig's mouth, it was all about sweet swings and muscle and the arc of a well-struck ball heading to points far, far away.

It was a time to cheer the home run, still the King. Not to dump on it any more.

"It's one of the most powerful things in sports," Milwaukee's Richie Sexson said of the round-tripper. "Not a lot of people can do that."

The King, of course, has taken a terrible beating lately. Just as Mark McGwire , Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds make mincemeat of home run records, people talk about how cheap they've become.

First it was all the stuff about juiced baseballs. They jumped off the bat. It was unfair. Really, Brady Anderson hitting 50? C'mon.

Then it was bad pitching. Oooh, the pitching's terrible. Anyone can hit a home run off these meat tossers.

Now, of course, it's steroids. Anyone with a syringe and the, ummm, bravery to use it can pound a ball into the stands. And that puts everyone who hits for power under suspicion. It's like a guy can't even smash a 500-footer anymore without people looking for bruises on his butt.

"Really, in a Home Run Derby, [fans] don't care if the guy is on steroids," said Lance Berkman, the Houston slugger who, if looks mean anything, certainly is not.

Berkman, who no one would say is "cut," leads the NL with 29 home runs at the break. He had one in the first round Monday and bowed out.

Earlier Monday, Berkman addressed the steroid questions surrounding baseball and said he'd get tested in a second if someone asked.

"All I do," said Berkman, "is eat. And drink coffee."

The steroids question was around Monday night -- Sosa answered it before the Derby -- but the fans came anyway. More than 41,000 packed into Miller Park to see what is nothing more, really, than a (ahem) juiced-up batting practice.

It's a funny thing about home runs, though. When they're flying around like so many veiled union threats, they become almost mundane.

Sosa, the Cubs slugger, smashed 12 homers in the first round. He cranked them off windows, through them, into the upper decks, to straightaway center. He buzzed the little slide in deep left that Bernie Brewer goes down when a Milwaukee player goes deep.

In the old park, Bernie slid into a big beer stein. In this one, he slides onto a ledge and waves a flag. Freaking political-correctness police.

Anyway, it was an impressive display by Sosa. One homer sailed 524 feet, or roughly the size of Bonds' ego. Sosa's homers averaged 477 feet apiece.

"He's a manimal," said the Yankees' Jason Giambi.

By the time Texas' Alex Rodriguez, maybe the best player in the game, stepped to the plate and launched a 492-footer, though, the fans barely looked up from their bratwurst. By the time Giambi outlasted Sosa in the final round, both the brats and the fans were done.

Like many things, home runs are best taken in moderation. It's the argument you hear from old timers, how the finer points of the game -- bunting, moving a player over, hit-and-runs, the stolen base -- have been lost because of the love affair with the round-tripper.

Still, for one night, the Home Run Derby is a small indulgence, a baseball fan's guilty pleasure. And the fact is, in the end, no one gapes at a sacrifice bunt. No one gets worked up about someone moving over a runner.

In the end, the home run is still King.

John Donovan is a senior writer for CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.

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