Don't shoot the messenger

Bonds' comments about Ruth had some merit

There's no telling what Barry Bonds' motivation or intent was when he went on his Babe Ruth rant during the All-Star break. Understanding the workings of Bonds' mind is harder than slipping a fastball by him on the inside part of the plate. But the one thing that's clear is that he doesn't deserve the amount of criticism he's taken for his comments.

In case you missed it during the Kobe gossip-athon of the past few weeks, Bonds, who is 68 home runs short of Ruth's total of 714 homers for second place on the all-time list, revealed that he's more concerned with leaving the Bambino in his dust than he is with surpassing Hank Aaron's record of 755. Barring injury, it's inevitable that Bonds will pass his godfather Willie Mays' 660 homers for third place, after which he says, " ... the only number I care about is Babe Ruth's. Because as a left-handed hitter, I wiped him out. That's it. And in the baseball world, Babe Ruth's everything, right? I got his slugging percentage and I'll take his home runs and that's it. Don't talk about him no more."

From the amount of flak those words generated, you might have thought that Bonds had dissed the Pope, not the Babe. No one took greater offense than Michael L. Gibbons, executive director of the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum in Baltimore. "To suggest that [Bonds'] feats are somehow capable of 'wiping out' Ruth illustrates a complete disregard for the history and tradition of our national game, and its greatest player and star," Gibbons said in a statement, which concluded "Can Bonds 'wipe out' Ruth? Not today, not forever."

But the history and tradition of major league baseball Gibbons speaks of includes decades of segregation, during which players of color were barred from the game. That's the history and tradition Babe Ruth was a part of, and instead of disregarding it, Bonds was probably referring to it, in his own oblique, prickly way. It's true that Bonds has developed a reputation as more of a stinker than a thinker, but even he has to realize the significance of pushing the numbers of pre-integration stars like Ruth farther down in the record books.

This isn't to say that Ruth wasn't one of the greatest players the game has ever known. He was. But his legacy also benefits from the baffling tendency to disregard an obvious fact that diminishes his achievements, as well as those of any major leaguer who played before the game was integrated in 1947 -- Ruth played in something less than a true major league because he didn't face all of the best competition.

Intelligent followers of the game point to Ruth's success as both a pitcher and a hitter as evidence of his greatness, yet the fact that he never pitched against many of the finest hitters or batted against some of the premier pitchers of his generation is usually reduced to a footnote, if it's mentioned at all. Ruth and other white stars compiled their impressive numbers against many players who would have been minor leaguers if not for segregation.

Would Ruth's single-season record of 60 homers have lasted 34 years if players such as Josh Gibson, who is said to have once hit 84 homers in a Negro League season, been allowed to play in the majors? Would Ted Williams have batted .406 and Joe DiMaggio hit safely in 56 consecutive games in 1941 if they had faced Satchel Paige and other great Negro League pitchers? We'll never know the answers to those kinds of questions, but logic says, probably not. It's impossible to look at the impact of black and Latin players over the last 56 years and not conclude that they would have had a similar impact had they been given the opportunity to join the majors earlier.

Although the Hall of Fame, to its credit, now includes Negro League ballplayers, baseball history in general has suffered from the same kind of whitewashed perspective that has skewed our understanding of American history. That's why players like Ruth are held in greater esteem than they probably should be, and it may be why Bonds spoke about him with something less than reverence. Bonds may not be the best messenger, but that doesn't affect the truth of the message.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Phil Taylor writes about a Hot Button topic every Monday on SI.com.

 

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