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Dispatch
5/4/06
5/4/06
COMMENTARY
Bonds will always fall short of Ruth
Thursday, May 04, 2006
ROB OLLER
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Barry Bonds might match the swat, but never the Sultan.
Any day now, Bonds will belt home run No. 715 to move past Babe Ruth into second place on major-league baseball’s career list. Those who can’t stand the thought of the San Francisco Giants slugger bumping aside the Bambino can take comfort from knowing that Bonds’ accomplishment comes with not one, but two asterisks.
The first involves steroids. The second involves stereotypes.
Set the steroids issue aside for a moment, and Bonds still comes up short when compared with Ruth. We want our home run heroes to do more than light up the scoreboard. We also expect them to light up a room, the way Ruth did with his overthe-top antics and bombastic personality. When Ruth wasn’t calling shots, he was drinking them. He wore full-length fur coats to bed and considered sunrise the end of his day.
There’s a reason, beyond its long shelf life, that Ruth’s home run total remains easier to remember than the major-league record owned by Hank Aaron — 755 in case you forgot. Aaron had character. Ruth was a character.
So even though Bonds will move past Ruth in one statistical category, he will always lag behind in the nonstatistical department of public adoration, and would have even if steroids had never become an issue.
Ruth ate hot dogs and got bellyaches. Bonds eats reporters and gets indignant.
Ruth was no saint, but he exhibited so-called friendly vices. A day at the park was typically followed by a night on the town, and his appetite for the long ball was exceeded only by his hunger for happy hour. Ruth was larger than life, but calories, not chemicals, helped get him there.
Bonds, meanwhile, gets painted as a brooding bully who would rather hole up in his private corner of the clubhouse than make friends with teammates. His shaved pate signifies his public stance — never let your hair down. Occasionally, he will show a silly side, as when he wore a wig and dress while imitating Paula Abdul during a spring-training spoof of American Idol, but more often he keeps his inner child locked in the closet.
Given the night-and-day differences between the two, it’s interesting that their career paths share similar twists and turns. Bonds already was an excellent player in Pittsburgh before moving to San Francisco, where his home run production received a shot in the arm, so to speak.
Ruth was dangerous as a Boston pitcher before the Red Sox sold him to the New York Yankees, for whom he became a hitting legend.
Ruth’s career, both inside and outside the lines, benefited from his playing in the Roaring ’20s, when excess was not only tolerated but appreciated. The media of the day made him a household name, but not because of what he did off the field. Ruth’s late-night escapades seldom made headlines, and there were no TV cameras to record possible run-ins he may have had with fans or reporters.
The media have helped mold Bonds’ reputation, as well. He wasn’t a sympathetic figure to begin with; the BALCO controversy further defined him as a player who should be berated rather than beloved.
Finally, there is this connection between the two players: Ruth thrived on ripping home runs like no one before him, sending baseballs towering into bleachers that previously had been unreachable.
Bonds, for all his claims that passing the Babe seldom enters his thinking, might have turned to steroids to achieve Ruthian results. He already was a feared hitter before bulking up, but apparently wanted to hit higher, longer and more home runs than was otherwise naturally possible. Mission accomplished.
But while no one will forget how the Babe hit so many home runs, neither will history hide how Bonds reached his number. With an asterisk, or two.
Rob Oller is a sports reporter for The Dispatch.
[email protected]
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maybe if roids didn't make his head so big it would have missed him.
