The Omnibus

Issue date: 4/15/04 Section: Sports

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Nothing ruins a historic moment like a warm glass of ignorance. Monday afternoon, Barry Bonds hit his record-tying 660th home run of his career. This put him in a tie with Willie Mays for third place for the most home runs in a career.

No sooner had Bonds received that goofy-looking torch from Mays, his godfather, did the controversy start brewing over whether Bonds was juiced.

People do not understand that steroids have little to no effect over how good a baseball player is. It is not like football where the stronger and faster a player is, the more likely he is to be great. There are no offensive linemen or linebackers in baseball. Strength means next to nothing in baseball. Need examples? How about Alex Rodriguez? Or Alfonso Soriano? If Carlos Delgado is on steroids, then he must have been taking the special "non-bulk" version along with Albert Pujols and Carlos Beltran. Being "huge" does not correlate to being a home run hitter. It just means that player is really huge, nothing more.

I remember going to a Kansas City Royals game early once and seeing Derrick Thomas and Neil Smith taking batting practice. Both were in the prime of their playing careers for the Kansas City Chiefs. Thomas and Smith were about as muscular as American Idol star Ruben Studdard is fat. Neither one of them could hit the ball out of the infield. Why? Because hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in sports. I want to see the world's strongest man hit a home run off any major league pitcher, and that includes Darrel May. It will not happen.

Bonds hit 660 home runs due to three simple reasons; he has the best swing, is the smartest hitter and he has the best hand-eye coordination in the game since Ted Williams. Biceps do not hit home runs, brains do. When Royals players had time off during Spring Training, they did not go lift weights, they took batting practice at a special machine to help them improve their hand-eye coordination.  

If someone is wondering why home runs have gone up so much in the last few years, they need look no further than the pitching mound and the numbers on the fences in any Major League stadium. Stadiums have become as small as players have big. Pitching has got worse with expansion and is just now catching up with the rest of the league. Minute Maid Park in Houston is about as small as the SBU Lady Bearcats' softball field. Coors Field in Denver plays like a tee-ball field. The corners in Fenway Park are practically in the infield. However, there is that ugly big green wall that gets in the way.

Should there be regulations concerning the use of steroids in baseball? Yes, but not because it makes the playing field uneven, but because it compromises the health of the athletes who take them, and it gives fans the perception that steroids actually help athletes. It is not good for baseball to have a cloud lingering over them questioning whether its product is real or a manipulation of genetics. When Bonds hits his 715th and 756th home runs in the next few years, I do not want to hear anymore about steroids, just Barry Bonds, the greatest player of our time.

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