Home Run King

Well, Barry Bonds hit his 756th home run to become the home run king over Hank Aaron. Woo hoo.

Aaron had held the record for 33 years with 755 home runs. In this age of steroids in baseball (an most other professional sports - don't get me started on cycling), it is difficult to know how to feel about this. On one hand, it is an amazing achievement to have been playing that long (this is Bonds 21st season) and hit that many home runs, along with the many other records he holds. On the other hand, there is the fact that he has used steroids. Even if he didn't know that's what he was using at the time, he still used them. This then brings up the question, what will happen in the Hall of Fame? Will his name go on the leader board with an asterisk? Will it go on at all? Will he ever get inducted into the Hall? Is using steroids as bad as betting on your own team?

I don't know what will happen. Unfortunately, because the testing is so sparse and anonymous in baseball, we may never know who has done/is still doing steroids, and how can we penalize one person without penalizing those who we don't know about? Most of all, whose fault is it? The player's union? The weasely commissioner? What needs to happen, is the rules need to change. Are the managers worried that people won't watch baseball if there isn't a home run in every inning? If we don't have pitchers that can strike out 10 batters in a game? We need to stop the cheating and stop it now. I know that players have been cheating ever since games were invented. However, in my idealistic (some might say naiive) belief that there is good in everyone I think that people actually do want to play fair. Until that day happens, I will try my best to instill fairness in every game that I play (yes, even pitch) and I will keep my belief that the rules are there for a reason.