Bonds Ties the Babe at 714

The home run Barry Bonds hit off the Oakland A's Brad Halsey was a pretty good shot. Although it was struck by a designated hitter rather than a real baseball player, it still counts as number 714 in his career. That's the same number as Babe Ruth hit. However, the steroid controversy has turned this milestone into a point of self-righteous nonsense. Mercifully, Henry Aaron's 755 is far enough off that the world may be spared any more such posturing until next season.

The use of drugs by athletes to enhance their performance is a problem for the prohibitionist puritans and their intellectually bankrupt position. They argue on the one hand that drugs are destructive psychologically, intellectually and physically. And that is true. At the same time, they argue that certain drugs should be banned from sports because they give the users an unfair advantage, they are “performance enhancing.” So, which is it? Are they destructive or artificially productive? Once again, the Kensington Review remains adamantly opposed to drug use (including nicotine, alcohol and Prozac) while being even more opposed to prohibition, which merely imposes huge social costs in addition to the damage drug use does.

Barry Bonds has become the poster boy for steroids in baseball specifically, and in sports generally. Steroids help pack on muscle, which clearly has advantages in sports. Steroid use is quicker than weightlifting, and it does make up for disadvantageous genetics in ways that plain old fashioned hard work doesn't. Steroids have been shown to cause damage to women and youths, but the same studies show no real damage to adult males (which includes all major league baseball players).

However, hitting home runs is more than a matter of strength, and this is where much of the debate devolves into uninformed ranting. Ted William's, perhaps the greatest hitter who ever lived, noted that hitting a round ball traveling 90 miles per hour with a round bat is one of the hardest physical feats going. A home run is more than just hitting the ball; it must have a certain trajectory flying between the foul poles. Strength isn't enough. Precise timing is required; it demands eye-hand coordination as well as strength. Steroids only help a 330 foot shot go 340 feet, and that makes a difference between an out and a homer only occasionally

Barry Bonds compounds the negativity of his situation by being, not to put too fine a point on it, an unlovable jackass. He is, simply, the incarnation of everything wrong with the sports-culture of the US. He is self-absorbed, self-indulgent, aloof and arrogant. Giving a man like that millions of dollars amplifies the flaws in his character. Driven to win at any price, he used steroids. What the sports writers and baseball fans hate about Mr. Bonds is not the “cheating,” nor is it race in catching the Babe. They hate the mirror he holds up to American sports, in which they see too much of themselves.

© Copyright 2006 by The Kensington Review, Jeff Myhre, PhD, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent. Produced using Fedora Linux.

Home