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Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Bonds chase not down glory road
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
We don’t celebrate the number anymore. We celebrate the athlete.
We don’t view 756 like we did 715, and it’s not because Barry Bonds is arrogant or grumpy. It’s not about race. It’s how he got there. Mark McGwire could be pleasant and is white. But we don’t celebrate the memory of 70 home runs and his eclipsing of Roger Maris. Not since Andro turned him mute before Congress.
We are in different times now, times of lab-created cleanup hitters.
The number doesn’t define the athlete anymore. It’s the other way around.
“Will this record be embraced by everybody? Probably not,” said Tom House, the former Braves pitcher who caught Hank Aaron’s 715th home run 33 years ago. “But the record will be broken again, probably by Alex Rodriguez. So I guess people will be looking forward to that.”
Barry Bonds is baseball’s home run champion.
A-Rod is on deck.
Please, somebody start the countdown.
Aaron passed Babe Ruth on April 8, 1974, and held the record for more than 33 years. Bonds may hold it for as few as six. Rodriguez, often cast as mush in clutch moments by fans in New York and beyond, figures to become the player we wrap our arms around. He averaged 42 homers per year from 1996 to 2006. Maintain that and he’ll be in the 750s by 2013. And then, we’ll stand.
How many superstars, in any sport, could break such a hallowed mark and not receive even one major endorsement during the chase? The pursuit should’ve been worth millions, not scorn. A soft drink commercial, a snack food, a car.
Imagine if this was Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan approaching a record.
Imagine anybody but such a pariah.
One Web site is selling foam asterisks with “steroids” imprinted on it. Another is hawking T-shirts that read, “Hank Did It On Steak And Eggs!” I think BarryBonds.com might be selling “Go Barry!” buttons, but I’m not sure.
Does this sound like a celebration?
A career home run record speaks to talent and longevity. Bonds should be remembered as one of the game’s greatest players. But his late-career inflation in hat size and homers taints this.
He hit 445 in his first 14 seasons. An average of 31.8. He hit 258 in the next five. An average of 51.6. It wasn’t just that he ate more carrots.
We see an unfortunate mix of greatness and BALCO. We see a strong, enduring 43-year-old, against the backdrop of ongoing investigations by the feds and baseball.
In 1974, we saw only Hank.
Oh, there was racism. Aaron had to endure hate, like Jesse Owens and Jackie Robinson and Arthur Ashe. But when he passed Ruth, it was, as House recalls, “a pure baseball moment.” Most of the animosity facing Bonds isn’t rooted in racism but rather the perception that he cheated the game.
Aaron: He did it on steak and eggs and heart. Al Downing of the Dodgers threw the pitch. Aaron drove it over the wall in left-center at the old stadium. House, a Braves relief pitcher, didn’t have to move in the bullpen.
“I remember making the catch, I remember a long fishnet held by a fan shooting in front of me, I remember [Bill] Buckner running back and jumping to try to make the catch,” said House, still a pitching instructor based in San Diego.
“I got the ball and the first thing I did was run onto the field. I reached out and gave the ball to Hank and he just said, ‘Thanks, kid.’ He had tears in his eyes and tears on his cheeks. It stunned me. This was steady Henry Aaron. But he was hugging his mom with tears in his eyes.”
House says he doesn’t have any ill feelings about Bonds breaking the mark. But he understands why others do. “The perception is he cheated,” he said. “I can’t condone performance enhancements, but the reality is there were a lot more home runs hit in the non-steroid era.”
In total, true. In annual average, not so much. Therein lies the issue. It’s why Bonds is not held in the same esteem as Aaron and Ruth, Mays and Mantle, Robinson and McCovey. It’s why we look down the road to Rodriguez.
“A-Rod will break it, and that’ll be it,” House said. “It’s about talent, consistency, health and longevity. Nobody wants to play 25 or 26 years anymore.”
Rodriguez is at 500. Start the countdown. Please.
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You can’t fool us, Bobby Cox
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
New York — In his continuing quest to lead the majors in group hugs and downplay anything that might tempt an emotional ripple, Bobby Cox reacted accordingly Tuesday when asked about the significance of this series against the New York Mets.
“It’s like April,” he said. “It’s just a series. Every series is the same in my book.”
Yes, Bobby. It’s just a series. It’s April. It’s not August. That’s why your general manager just sent four prospects to Texas for Mark Teixeira. To make a statement for May. Cute.
Did the Braves clinch something Tuesday night? No.
Will anybody clinch anything this week? No.
But it was telling that when the Braves opened a three-game series against the Mets, it was difficult to tell who was leading whom in the division. It was 6-0 after, like, 10 minutes.
The Braves are closing, and the Mets know it. They had the better team on paper after the trade deadline last week, and they certainly had the better team on sod Tuesday. They won 7-3. They have won six of their past eight overall. They have drummed the Mets in seven of nine meetings since dropping one to New York, 11-1 … in April.
It is four months later. And, yes, the players realize that.
Told of Cox’s comments, Chipper Jones smiled.
“That’s prototypical Bobby.
“I think we’re a little more focused. We know whenever we play them we can gain ground.”
The second-place team has momentum. The first-place team looks like it’s on a hamster wheel.
Maybe you thought the Mets running away with things last year would start a trend. Now it looks like an aberration. They were inferior in every area: starting pitching, relief pitching, hitting, the defense (they turned three double-plays, negating a meaningless error).
A year ago, the Mets woke up with a 13-1/2 game lead over Philadelphia and 15-1/2 over the Braves. They were 23 games over .500 (67-44). The Mets were good. The fact the Braves’ bullpen resembled gasoline alley merely turned the deficit into something mutant.
But neither team bares much resemblance to those of last year. The Braves have a rebuilt bullpen (four relievers threw four shutout innings Tuesday) and probably their best lineup in a decade. They also now have a legitimate third starter in Buddy Carlyle, who has evolved from novelty act.
The rotation used to be: Tim Hudson, John Smoltz, then get smacked by a Winnebago. (Among the flattened: Kyle Davies, Mark Redman. Mike Hampton never made it out of spring.) Now look. Carlyle, with his seventh organization and not far removed from the Hanshin Tigers, is 7-3. He has only three fewer victories than Smoltz.
How important is Carlyle? “Well, you saw what happened with Redman,” said Cox, alluding to his 11.63 ERA.
The Mets have gone the other way. They are on their second hitting coach and third starting second baseman. They did nothing of significance before the trade deadline, unless you count this: On the same day the Braves acquired Teixeira, Dotel and Ron Mahay, New York put Carlos Beltran on the disabled list. That sure fired up the masses.
This was the teams’ first meeting since the Braves’ makeover. Paper spoke volumes. The Braves scored six earned runs in five innings against a pitcher (Oliver Perez) who had held them to three in 20-2/3 in three previous starts.
“It’s nice to get a little momentum,” Jones said. But he soon channeled his manager.
“What did we cut the lead to — 3-1/2 games,” he said. “It can be right back to 4-1/2 if we don’t play well [today]. In that sense, that’s why Bobby’s saying those things. When the clock strikes midnight, you flush it.”
It’s the right approach. But the flushing sound seems to be coming from the other clubhouse.
Permalink | Comments (46) | Categories: Braves / MLB, Jeff Schultz
Ruth makes case for greatest ever
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Furman Bisher
Throughout all this home-run hassle, Barry Bonds and the drug quandary, Alex Rodriguez thumping his way into the act, and the stiff-necked defense of Henry Aaron as the real, true-blue home-run king, re-enter the heroic figure of Babe Ruth. Yep, he, too, plumped up as he aged, but it was a different kind of plumping. He just got fatter. Bonds bulged, and there is a difference, but I’m going to let you figure that out.
(Speaking of me and figures, I’m a casualty at mathematics. The other day I wrote that Joe Sewell struck out every .016 times at bat, a terrible misprint. Remember, Sewell struck out only 114 times in just over 7,000 at-bats in the major leagues, as far as I’m concerned, the most incredible record in baseball. So it should have read that he struck out only once every 62.6 at-bats. Accept this apology from a guy who managed to squeak through college without taking a course in math, which I obviously needed.)
Babe Ruth had a unique career. He pitched for five seasons with the Red Sox before taking to the field full time. Not just some donkey of a pitcher who filled in now and then. He was a full-time starter and won 94 games. In 1918 he set a World Series record for consecutive shutout innings that stood for years. I’ve read that he always spoke of that as his most treasured record, not all the slugging feats. Even one season as a pitcher, he led the American League in home runs. Hitting ‘em, not throwing ‘em.
He was 24 years old before he switched from pitching to the outfield full time. Those days the major leagues played a 154-game schedule, not increased to 162 games until 1961, in the American League, long after the Babe was gone. The comparisons between Ruth and the other mighty home-run bombers gets more interesting the deeper you get into them.
Aaron had 12,364 official times at bat. Bonds was up to 9,771 through Monday. Ruth went to bat only 8,399 official times, nearly 4,000 less than Aaron and losing ground to Bonds every week. Along the way his batting average gets lost in all the home-run babble. Babe Ruth was a lifetime .342 hitter, some of that in “deadball” times.
Aaron leads them all in runs batted in, not much above Ruth, but seemingly out of reach of Bonds. Aaron drove in 2,297 runs, Ruth 2,213 and Bonds stood at 1,980 through Monday, not within catching reach of Aaron, it would seem. Aaron was as solid a hitter as ever came down the road. He swung for base hits, not home runs, most of his career, and he leads them all in extra-base hits (1,477) and total bases (6,856). If you were going for distance, Ruth was your man. It has been calculated that put together, Ruth’s home runs traveled farther than any other slugger’s.
While all this has been going on, another combatant has moved onto the scene like a horse on the rail. Rodriguez has just turned 32 and, banking on good health, could be in action another eight years. That being the possibility, all of the above is moot, even the impressive records that Aaron has set as a target. Thus, all those records could be wiped out, though throw in Ruth’s as a pitcher and he stands alone.
Rodriguez has 500 home runs earlier than them all, and chances are, he’ll pass Aaron’s RBI and extra-base hits total in time. Through Monday, he had driven in 1,460 runs in 7,179 times at bat, with 916 extra-base hits. At that pace, he could take the lead in every power-hitting category. Nobody’s record would be safe, that is, except Ruth’s, all variables considered.
And those considered, his career as a pitcher, his late switch to outfielding, his arm, his home-run production in far fewer swings, and the seasons of 154-game schedules, there’s a strong case here that, while all the noise and speculation swirls around the later generations and the present, the greatest major leaguer of all-time probably was George Herman Ruth, the Babe.
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Spurrier flies off the handle
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Jeff Schultz
THE TUESDAY COUNTDOWN
10: So I guess the SCLC just ran the first reverse of the football season.
9: Off to New York to watch the Braves vs. the Mets and Joey Harrington vs. the Odds.
8: Considering buying another fake Rolex in Battery Park. The last one I had lasted a year. I figure it’s worth getting another, just so I can conduct a little science experiment. Who/what stops ticking first: Harrington or the watch? Anybody want to post a favorite?
7: Seriously, I don’t have any idea how Harrington will do with his third team. I know he’s a good guy. I know he talks a good game, which may or may not mean a thing. But I’ll crawl out on this limb: If he does perform another face-plant, it won’t be because he feels overwhelmed, as was the case in Detroit. It’ll just be because he’s not very good.
6: Steve Spurrier is a great coach, great recruiter, great for college football. But if the man thinks anybody is going to bite on this woe-is-me act concerning the South Carolina admissions department, he’s a nut job.
5: Any university has a right to set its own admissions policy, regardless of NCAA minimum standards. The fact that school officials have rejected two of Spurrier’s recruits hardly ranks as an unusual occurrence in college athletics. Nothing against South Carolina. But it’s not the Harvard of the South. It’s not even the Harvard of South Carolina.
4: Spurrier said, “Hopefully, I truly believe this is the last year this is going to happen, because I can’t operate like that. I can’t operate misleading young men.” Yeah. OK, let me translate: “You had better start admitting my really fast but academically borderline recruits so I can start winning more football games, because otherwise, me and my golf clubs are so outta here.”
- Sitting on a plane right now. Read an item about the drunk (allegedly) ASA flight attendant who told a captain, “You’re dead.” (allegedly). Got an idea. Make her sit in an aisle seat as passengers keep slamming the drink cart into her knee.
2: Before you get too excited about Liberty Media blowing open the Braves budget: The real test of ownership is not paying one-third of a player’s contract (like Mark Teixeira’s this year) but after the season when Andruw Jones is a free agent and potentially after next season when Teixeira can walk.
1: Barry Bonds is at 755. Blindfolds in place, everyone?
Permalink | Comments (47) | Categories: Jeff Schultz, Quick Hit
