Bonds Gets Record, But Not the Credit

Somehow, and it’s odd, it didn’t much matter if Barry Bonds did it or not. It was like the Rickey Henderson thing. Suddenly, Henderson was lionized for having scored the most runs ever. Doesn’t that just mean a lot of guys got hits behind him? Granted, he long has been an offensive force in every way, but scoring runs is an orchestra’s work, not a soloist’s.

So as Henderson slid across home plate into the embrace of teammates with the run that put him ahead of Ty Cobb, here’s what I thought: I’m historied out.

One question: Who do you want, Rickey Henderson or Ty Cobb?

Next case.

In sports today--in life today, for that matter--there’s an excess of excess. Or am I the only person in America who has seen too many choreographed celebrations? We have lost the true joy of Yogi-in-Larsen’s-arms spontaneity.

Even Cal Ripken Jr., who has made real history, called it “embarrassing” to hear ovations each time he came to bat on his goodbye tour. He’s a baseball lifer who respects the game, and all the huzzahs, sincere though they are, have nothing to do with baseball (as a man going 2-for-48 knows).

Another question: What happened in Yankee Stadium in 1927 when Babe Ruth yanked a home run to right, his 60th, breaking his record of 59 set six years earlier?

Did Lou Gehrig fall into a love-ya-man embrace of the big galoot? Did Ty Cobb telegraph his congratulations? Did eBay auction the ball?

Crossing home plate, Ruth perfunctorily shook hands with Gehrig. Back in the dugout, out of sight, Ruth, who had been challenged by Gehrig as the game’s pre-eminent slugger, shouted, “Sixty, count ‘em, 60! Let some other (profanity deleted) match that!”

That’s good ol’ country hardball.

Today, we have baseball as show business.

After Barry Bonds’ 70th and 71st home runs, we had communal festivities with everybody out of the dugout--there to be seen in the historic gathering, there as proof of camaraderie, there with batboys, sons and daughters, wives and mothers, maybe even an Amway sales rep in the scrum.

It seemed not contrived exactly, but contrived sort of. It had been 34 years between Ruth and Roger Maris, 37 between Maris and Mark McGwire.

But it was only three years between McGwire and Bonds--too brief an interlude to create national tension about another pursuit of the home run record.

It didn’t help the story, either, that Bonds is a natural loner with a sneer for those he considers his inferiors--which, to judge by the frequency of his surly behavior, seems to be most of us. Somehow this husband, father and professional athlete has reached 37 years old without learning to play with others.

The shame is, Bonds has been robbed of full credit. This year, long before the celebrations began, Bonds had proven he is one of baseball’s best ever. Hitting a baseball thrown 90 mph from 60 feet, 6 inches away remains an athletic feat all but incomprehensible even to people who have done it; home runs are the ultimate wonders.

OK, you say everybody hits home runs nowadays. OK, maybe the balls are juiced, maybe players are juiced, maybe Barry Bonds’ bat is cut from magic wood.

Or maybe not. Maybe baseball’s world has changed in the last decade the way it changed 80 years ago. If there are three times more home runs today, maybe there are 300 times more home run swings. Maybe those swings are taken by better athletes. From a population base of 500 million-plus people of all races--in the United States, Japan and other countries--even a one-eyed scout could find more home run hitters than baseball found in the 1920s pool of fewer than 100 million American white folks.

One thing is for sure: When Mark McGwire said he had it much harder in 1998 than Bonds did this season--he was the first to chase 61, he had to endure months of pesky media scrutiny--the whining revealed McGwire to be small-minded and wrong-headed.

With Sammy Sosa as his sweetheart sidekick, endearing them both to fans everywhere, McGwire rode a wave of shared good feeling past Maris. Bonds, in contrast, was on his own. He was portrayed darkly in the news media, cast as the prima donna disliked even by teammates. He worked in a pennant race with pitchers refusing to throw him strikes. Maybe most important in any discussion of Bonds’ mettle, he did the last of his great work after Sept. 11.

Under those circumstances, a man reaching 73 home runs though he never before had hit 50 has left McGwire in the shade.

And where, you may ask, does it leave Ruth? In 1927, Ruth hit more home runs than 12 of baseball’s 15 other teams. To match that mathematically, to hit more home runs than 80 percent of baseball’s other teams, Bonds would have needed more than 73 home runs this season, more than 100, more than 150. He would have needed 208.

Could be done. But only by a real Ruthian (profanity deleted).