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Bonds' HR chase lacks drama of '98
Updated: Sunday August 26, 2001 10:59 AM
Am I the only one having trouble getting excited about Barry Bonds' assault on the major-league home run record? I mean, he's into the mid-50s now, still in August, and isn't this about when we're all supposed to start paying attention? I mean, last time I checked, he was four dingers ahead of Mark McGwire's pace to the record of 70 in 1998 and weren't we all going a little hoo-ha by now with McGwire? What's the deal? I suppose Barry's character is a problem for a lot of people -- he's always been seen as a self-centered, big-ego kind of guy -- but I don't think that's it for me. Self-centered, big-ego guys abound in sports these days. Get rid of them and you might as well not pay any attention to the games at all. No, my problem is that all of this simply is happening too soon. There is no magic around the home run record now. There is no aura. No ivy. Three years is not nearly long enough to let the cement harden around McGwire's mark in Cooperstown, N.Y. To break the thing now -- and to be chased by Luis Gonzalez while doing it -- is to open up all the debates about the juiced baseball and the bandbox new ballparks and the expansion-era relief pitching found in the salvage yards of North and South America. The drama simply isn't there. Bonds isn't Roger Maris and McGwire isn't Babe Ruth and, alas, the most fabled record in American sport seems to have been established with some devalued dot-com currency. Barry Bonds? If he is going to hit 70 home runs, well, Babe Ruth would have hit 100 today. That's the thought that won't go away. Leigh Montville appears regularly on CNN/Sports Illustrated. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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