Actually from [2001, originally published on] 2003-06-25, Berkeley Breathed:
I’d be a Libertarian, if they weren’t all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.
Ha!
For a long time, I’ve been complaining about Barry Bonds, and how the record books would be “tainted” if Bonds were to break Aaron’s career home runs record. After doing some research, and giving it some thought, I’m officially changing my position.
Let’s look at baseball’s all-time batting records, and see who holds them:
Hits: Pete Rose (2nd Place: Ty Cobb)
Home Runs: Hank Aaron (trailed by Bonds, previously held by Babe Ruth)
Walks: Barry Bonds (2nd Place: Rickey Henderson)
Batting Average: Ty Cobb
Runs Scored: Rickey Henderson (2nd Place: Ty Cobb)
RBI: Hank Aaron (2nd Place: Babe Ruth)
Stolen Bases: Rickey Henderson
Slugging Percentage: Babe Ruth
Do you notice something odd about this list? Notice that one of these things is not like the others? Hank Aaron is the only guy on this list who wasn’t/isn’t a major league asshole, or worse. Baseball has a long and storied tradition of having its most beloved records held by total dickheads. What’s a nice guy doing on this list? Clearly, Aaron doesn’t belong there.
Therefore, Bonds needs to break Aaron’s home run record, to restore the natural order to the record books. Anything less would be a violation of baseball’s most consistent tradition. And nothing is more important to baseball than tradition.
P.S. The RBI record is trickier. Bonds is the closest active player, and he’s over 350 behind Aaron. No other active player is even remotely close to that.
P.P.S. The consecutive games played record, held by Cal Ripken, Jr., gets a pass, because it was previously held by Gehrig, who as far as I can tell was also a nice guy. But baseball has room for only one exception, not two.
Royalty was like dandelions. No matter how many heads you chopped off, the roots were still there underground, waiting to spring up again.
It seemed to be a chronic disease. It was as if even the most intelligent person had this little blank spot in their heads where someone had written: "Kings. What a good idea." Whoever had created humanity had left in a major design flaw. It was its tendency to bend at the knees.
-- Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay
