This record chase has endured far longer than was expected, as infirmities, a swing finally slowed by age and the unwillingness of many teams to throw Bonds strikes (and his willingness to accept walks rather than swing at bad pitches), stalled the San Francisco Giants slugger’s assault on Hammerin’ Hank’s record. Though the moment has long seemed inevitable, most baseball fans—at least those other than Giant loyalists—did not appear to welcome it. There are many more ways to measure men than by home runs, and many fans view Bonds as an unworthy replacement for the highly regarded Aaron as king. Tuesday, Aaron offered his congratulations: “I would like to offer my congratulations to Barry Bonds on becoming baseball’s career home run leader,” Aaron said in a statement. “It is a great accomplishment which required skill, longevity and determination. Throughout the past century, the home run has held a special place in baseball and I have been privileged to hold this record for 33 of those years. I move over now and offer my best wishes to Barry and his family on this historic achievement. My hope today, as it was on that April evening in 1974, is that the achievement of this record will inspire others to chase their own dreams.”
Of course, Aaron was not always quite as revered a figure in the game as he is today. For most of his career, he was thought of as not quite the equal—in fans’ hearts or minds—as his flashier and perhaps more talented contemporaries, Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle. But while Aaron never matched the pinnacles of his rivals’ greatest seasons, he was the most consistent slugger of his era, maintaining his health and sweet swing through much of three decades. As he was nearing the record, in the face of hate mail—including death threats—from those loath to witness a black man bump baseball’s great white icon from the record books, it was Aaron’s dignity that brought him his greatest acclaim. And in the 31 years since his retirement, Aaron has come to be regarded as one of the game’s and our nation’s pre-eminent treasures.
The same cannot be said of Bonds. While he has certainly faced a great deal of nastiness as he pursued the record, unlike Aaron he bears much of the responsibility for bringing it on. Most of the disenchantment with the man and his records stems from the widely held conviction that Bonds cheated: that he used performance-enhancing drugs to transform himself from one of the game’s finest talents, a sleek, speedy player, into the amazing hulk, the greatest slugger baseball has ever witnessed. His defenders, a dwindling group, attribute anti-Bonds sentiment to the slugger’s prickly personality—he is popular with neither the press nor the players—as well as to racial bias; polls reveal a huge divide among black and white fans in their support for Bonds.
Still, his defenders are not particularly convincing. To the extent that the slugger has been singled out, it is because he is the singular star of a baseball era that has come to be viewed as tainted. And, unlike other players who have stirred up rumors, Bonds has been directly linked to an illegal drug operation. He was a customer of BALCO, a Bay Area high-tech nutrition company that also dispensed illegal, performance-enhancing drugs, including steroids and human growth hormone. It is worth noting that both the press and the baseball public have been harsh to other superstars who breached their trust. Rafael Palmeiro, who tested positive for steroids, has been unable to find a job in baseball despite his expressed desire for another chance. And after Mark McGwire’s bumbling testimony before a congressional steroid inquiry, he has disappeared from the public arena—despite ranking eighth all-time in home runs—and was overwhelmingly rejected in his first year of eligibility for the Hall of Fame.
Nobody has laid out the case against Bonds better than two San Francisco Chronicle reporters, Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, in their book “Game of Shadows.” Bonds has publicly denied ever knowingly taken illegal drugs. But in grand-jury testimony leaked to the Chronicle team, Bonds described using two substances—recognizable as the BALCO steroids “the clear” and “the cream”—which, he testified, he received from his trainer and he believed to be flaxseed oil and rubbing liniment.
BALCO founder Victor Conte, who went to prison in the case, has said repeatedly that while he sold performance-enhancing drugs to Bonds’s personal trainer, Greg Anderson, he had no knowledge of what Anderson did with them. Anderson was convicted of distribution of steroids in the BALCO case and served three months in jail. He has now returned to prison—and has been there for almost a year—after refusing to testify to another grand jury investigating whether Bonds perjured himself in the original BALCO investigation. The term of that grand jury was just extended by six months, and it will resume deliberations in September.
Through the first half of his career, Bonds was regarded as one of the top handful of players in the game. Still, in 1998, according to “Game of Shadows,” Bonds was infuriated by all the acclaim heaped on McGwire and Sammy Sosa, two players he considered not his equal. What followed was an unprecedented chapter in baseball history—indeed, pretty much in sports history. A player in his late 30s, a time when age usually brings about a decline in athletic performance, produced numbers that dwarfed those of his prime years. Bonds, who had never hit more than 46 home runs in a season and had averaged 37 a year from ages 27 to 33—usually the best years in a baseball player’s career—banged out 52 homers a year from ages 35 to 39, including a record 73 in 2001.
With his 756th clout, Bonds now owns the two most storied records in the game. Aaron was not in attendance to see his mark broken, having made it clear months earlier, citing age and inconvenience, that he would not be a prop in Bonds’s chase. Aaron’s has been reticent to take sides publicly in the Bonds debate, but his recent comments suggest, at the very least, some disdain for the man who is the new home-run king. “It’s really not a big concern of mine,” he told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution at the start of the season. “I don’t know why I should have to do anything. I might send him a telegram and that would be the extent of it.”
Baseball commissioner Bud Selig couldn’t get away with such a dismissal. Having presided over the steroids era, the commissioner, after all, shares some blame for all the shoddy way baseball has protected its once-treasured history. But while Selig may not have been much of a commissioner, nobody doubts that he is a fan. So while Selig might be in attendance to honor the game’s “tradition,” Bonds’s achievement would never have his blessing. He would not participate in any ceremonies commemorating the record home run.
Selig was not there. And with his muted response, he, in effect, put his own asterisk on the proceedings. The asterisk first appeared in baseball history in 1961 when then commissioner Ford Frick declared that if Roger Maris bested Babe Ruth’s single-season mark of 60 after 154 games, the length of the season in Babe’s era, his record would carry an asterisk. Maris hit his record-breaking 61st on the final day of the 162-game season and it took 30 years before commissioner Fay Vincent officially removed the stigma of that punctuation.
Still, the notion has endured in baseball, providing fans with a caveat that can easily be extended to all record-holders. Ruth—great, but, playing in a whites-only era, didn’t face the best competition; Aaron—played his final two seasons as a designated hitter, a less-taxing position that didn’t exist when Babe played ball. Bonds’s record, though, is perfectly suited for the asterisk, with all its implications. (Fan One: What do you think of Bonds’s record*? Fan Two: !)
With such a flawed leader, talk had shifted even before Bonds hit No. 756 to who might surpass him, and how soon. Ruth held the record for almost 40 years and Aaron for another 33, but most experts believe—and many fans fervently hope—that Bonds’s tenure will be far briefer. The consensus has settled on Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez as the most likely candidate to surpass Bonds (though less clear is what uniform he will be wearing if he does). Even Bonds endorsed that view, having publicly pledged—in a not so subtle slap at Aaron—to be in attendance whenever A-Rod claims the record.
But A-Rod’s ascendance is hardly a sure thing. Bonds has indicated he plans to play again next year and could, following Aaron’s lead, close out his career as a designated hitter in the American League. If he stays healthy, another season might bring him to 790 or even a once-unimaginable 800 home runs. A-Rod turned 32 in July and has recently reached the 500 home-run milestone. He has averaged almost 44 home runs a season the previous nine years and figures to top that number handily this season.
If he can maintain that same pace for another seven years, he would likely catch Bonds in 2014. But unlike Bonds, most sluggers experience a significant drop in their power numbers when they reach their late 30s. A-Rod would have to dodge that pitfall and avoid serious injury as well. Ken Griffey Jr. was once considered the best player in the game and the odds-on choice to surpass Aaron. Junior had 458 home runs by age 30—Bonds had 292 at the same age—but, slowed by a succession of serious injuries, is, at 37, only now closing in on his 600th home run.
It is rather strange to see A-Rod embraced as the next great hope since he wears no mantle comfortably. While he is enjoying a brilliant MVP-caliber season and has regained his reputation as the premiere player in the game, A-Rod has had an awkward and, at times, very disappointing tenure in New York—both on and off the field. Also, while Bonds has appeared unfazed by the record chase, it is unclear how A-Rod would handle the pressures. At the same time his agent is boasting that A-Rod, already the highest-paid player in the game, will become baseball’s first $30 million-a-year man in free agency this fall. Which inevitably raises the question of what exactly A-Rod is all about. By the time he is in position to catch Bonds, fans may better be able to answer that question. And by then it may be increasingly hard to embrace A-Rod as the great savior of baseball’s standards.
As for Bonds, the home run chase is over, and his defense of it has begun. “This record is not tainted at all” he said in a postgame news conference. “Period. You guys can say whatever you want.” Many will, at least until a new home run champ comes along.
