Another hope is for less piety, a shift in the altogether mystifying popular notion that the lifetime home-run mark is somehow sacrosanct—“baseball’s most hallowed record,” as the news reports called it the other day. Hallowed but hollow, perhaps, since home-run totals are determined not just by the batters but by different pitchers, in very different eras, and, most of all, by the outer dimensions of the major-league parks, which have always varied widely and have been deliberately reconfigured in the sixteen ballparks built since 1992, thus satisfying the owners’ financial interest in more and still more home runs. Bonds has been called a cheater, but the word should hardly come up in a sport whose proprietors, if they were in charge of the classic Olympic hundred-metre dash, would stage it variously at a hundred and six metres, ninety-four, a hundred and three, and so forth, and engrave the resulting times on a tablet.
2 comments:
I appreciate the perspective. At least Mr. Angell doesn't sweep the steriods issue under the rug like ESPN and the rest of the majority of the sports media, save Jim Rome.
However, there is a difference between uncontrollable circumstances, such as differences in ballparks, # of games per season, etc. and the performance enhancing drugs Bonds most assuredly took (Angell's use of the "unprovable" argument is laughable). One is dealing with the hand you are dealt. The other is cheating.
Nice article though.
Chris,
I agree. Comparisons in those circumstances will never be exact even if the players faced the same pitchers in the same ball parks because there would be other distinguishing factors. Certain differences are a given.
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