Bret Begun: As a Mets fan, do you take any particular pride in the fact thatone of your own caught No. 756?
Devin Gordon: I’m just relieved the guy got out of there alive. I was truly worried that whomever caught the ball would get torn to ribbons. Leaving aside his Mets allegiances, I think you and I can agree on one thing: no surprise that the ball landed in a sea of San Franciscans and a New Yorker came up with it. We’re tough like that. By the way, Mets were all over this milestone: poor Mike Bacsik, the pitcher who will live in infamy for giving up No. 756, is a former Met.
I don’t know about you, Bret, but I didn’t see the record-breaker live. To me, there’s some poetic justice that the home run came at 11:51 p.m. ET, when most of the country was asleep.
Begun: Was just going to ask you that. I learned that he’d broken it when I woke up this morning and checked my BlackBerry; I had e-mail alerts from CNN and The Washington Post. The notion of staying up to watch him potentially break the record didn’t even cross my mind. I’d been asleep for a good hour. I was just happy that I’d gotten to see Joba Chamberlain’s major-league relief debut for the Yankees.
OK, so, Bonds did it. What think?
Gordon: Here’s what I think: as a lifelong baseball fan, as a kid who grew up obsessed with baseball statistics and records, as someone who believed in the home-run mark as the most fabled achievement in sports, I think it’s just plain sad that we’ve got a new king, and I don’t even care that I slept through his coronation. At the risk of being hokey, this is the sort of moment we all watch sports for, and it should’ve been one that made everyone—everyone—smile and think, “Glad I was alive to see this.” Instead, for many of us, it was a big nothing.
Begun: Baseball’s commissioner seems to agree with you. Bud Selig’s statement, which hints at suspicions that Bonds used steroids, said, in part, “Barry’s achievement is noteworthy and remarkable.” “Noteworthy”? That’s the best you can do to fake it, Bud? Man, how much does he wish Greg Anderson—Bonds’s former personal trainer, who is in jail for refusing to testify to the grand jury—had talked?
Gordon: You are on the money about Selig’s statement, and you even singled out my favorite word in it: “noteworthy.” This record-breaking occasion was worthy of note. Please make a note of it. New home-run king of all time: duly noted. Thanks, Bud. Look, I’m no fan of Bonds, but I do have to say that, down the stretch run, he has actually been kind of classy—saying all the right things, thanking all the right people, even pretending to be friendly. Selig, on the other hand, has been a joke. Hey, Bud, we know you’re in a tight spot, but either support Bonds or don’t. He’s basically been giving Bonds a light golf clap while letting his true disdain seep through so obviously that a child could detect it. Forget whether it’s right or wrong. It’s simpler than that: it’s tacky.
Begun: Selig gets half of whatever asterisk Bonds gets, if not 51 percent of it. You know, the thing that bothers me more than Selig—the guy is in an awkward position, and it’s not surprising he’s acting awkwardly—is when I hear people talk about “innocent until proven guilty.” Yes, Barry Bonds has never tested positive for steroids. Fact. But in December 2004, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on transcripts of his federal grand-jury testimony. In it, he says that he used two substances—a clear substance and a cream—given to him by his trainer, Anderson. He says he didn’t know they were steroids. Fine. But just because he says he didn’t know doesn’t mean they weren’t, in fact, steroids. Am I missing something?
Gordon: All you’re missing is the ceaseless desire of many people in and around baseball to avoid confronting reality and avoid having to make hard decisions about how they feel. It’s easy to chirp platitudes like “innocent until proven guilty” or “we don’t know what really happened” or “everyone was doing it” (but how does that make it OK?). What’s hard is looking this matter in the eye and acknowledging what for many is the simple truth: were it not for steroids, Hank Aaron would still be the home-run king this morning. Period. And we wouldn’t be having this conversation—we’d be having it in six or seven years, the subject would be Alex Rodriguez, and the tone would be completely different. For one thing, we’d be happy about it. Well, you would. I still can’t stand that guy.
Begun: It’s kind of wonderful that the man so many love to hate now becomes an object of affection. He’s The Redeemer; he can purify the game. The second Bonds hit the homer last night, A-Rod’s $252 million contract became inconsequential. What matters now to diehards, I imagine, is that he stays healthy and continues racking up the homers. C’mon, you wouldn’t rather A-Rod hold the record?
Gordon: Absolutely, I’ll take A-Rod over Bonds. The trouble is, in much the same way that the mystique of breaking the single-season record was diminished when Bonds broke it just a few years after McGwire topped Maris, I fear there will be a similar sense of “whatever” when A-Rod tops Bonds so soon after Bonds topped Aaron. Bonds had the benefit of 34 years of accumulated history collecting like steam in a kettle. Six or seven years just isn’t enough time to get fired up. In a way, the person Bonds has robbed the most isn’t Aaron—that record was going to fall eventually, after all—but Alex Rodriguez. His moment won’t be nearly as extraordinary as it has every right to be.
Begun: A fair point, though the animus toward Bonds may only grow with time. And if it does, the good vibrations surrounding A-Rod may outweigh the fact that he’s only breaking a six-, seven-, eight-year record. I hope Aaron gets to see that happen. Do you think the conventional wisdom has shifted on Bonds, though, in the past 24 hours? I’m reading this morning about how there are no innocents in baseball—that he still had to go up there and hit the ball out of a ballpark 756 times, that he faced 446 pitchers and not all of them could be totally clean.
Gordon: I do think the conventional wisdom—that Bonds is an unmitigated villain—has shifted, for sure. All of us are making apologies for him now, and I get that. There’s no disputing there were 756 occasions when a major-league pitcher threw the ball his way and he hit it out of the park. There is something cold, finite and undeniable about the numbers. But that doesn’t let him off the hook with me, not by a long shot. If we found out he’d been using a corked bat all along, would the simplicity of the numbers matter then? No. Because he’d have cheated to hit those balls over the fence. Well, I belive he did cheat to hit those balls over the fence. The fact that some of those balls were thrown by people who were also cheating makes little difference to me. There’s one person in this saga whom we all know for sure didn’t cheat: Hank Aaron. To me, he’s still the home-run king. Bonds is just the king of his era. If you ask me, the convention wisdom has shifted for one reason: we got bored of the old conventional wisdom, so we moved onto a new one.
Begun: I await the backlash to the backlash.
