$$$: Three Balls: Glavine, A-Rod, Bonds
Credit first. The idea for this post comes from, as often, The New York Times, online. There was a quick piece on Bonds and A-Rod and their respective 755th and 500th home run balls.
A-Rod's ball is estimated to be worth $100K; but, the guy that got it says he may settle for a boatload of Yankee signed stuff. A-Rod says he would like the ball.
Nothing in the article about who caught Bonds' penultimate ball; but, the "experts" say the next one could be worth more than $600K.
Quietly last night, Tom Glavine pitched his 300th winning game, going into the sixth inning. The closer, I think Wagner, gave him the last ball and a hug. Priceless?
P.S. Blogger spell checker thinks contractions are misspellings; but, it gives a big OK when you type A-Rod.
8 comments:
Hi Dave.
Debo Blue
Bonds ball shouldn't be worth anything in my opinion, because he cheated. :-)
I give those guys kudos as they've achieved a career and sports highlight. However, I don't know where I stand on the "how they got there/what they've been doing" issue.
Bonds alleges he never doped so his achievement shouldn't be tarnished. Others say, how could he lie about his drug use?
A-Rod had that little spat a while back about being on the town without his spouse (the NY Daily News had a nice photo); however, we are congratulating him now for his achievement.
Maybe I am just a non-sportsy girl and don't have a leg to stand on to make comments. But I thought I would add my 2 cents :o)
Perhaps Bond's won't be worth as much as people expect: I've heard that steroids shrinks them.
Dave, I guess I'm responding to Keith as much as you, but, anyway, here goes:
I'm no great fan of Barry B*nds. The White Sox only had him for the better part of Spring Training one year and then sent him back to Pittsburgh. But I'm not bitter.
The contention is that B*nds' record is tainted because he used steroids.
I do not know whether he did or he didn't -- not for a certainty -- but if he didn't, Sammy So-so really did bulk up on Flinstones vitamins.
As he once contended.
You could look it up.
Assuming that Mr. B*nds in fact took steroids, he may have violated the law... but, until quite recently, there was no specific baseball rule against it. This contrasts to the spitball rule which Gaylord Perry flouted into the Hall of Fame. (On last night's Sox telecast, Hawk Harrelson again recounted the time he went into the clubhouse to say hello to Mr. Perry... who was in a whirlpool bath... that had within it as much vaseline as water.)
The hypocrites who run baseball are worried that the public may turn away from their product now that it is revealed that, for several years, many players "juiced." This is not unlike their august predecessors who ran baseball at the end of the second decade of the 20th Century. The issue then was gambling -- gambling which they had encouraged, tolerated, and in some instances probably participated in -- but, to protect their investments, scapegoats had to be found. Read "Eight Men Out" sometime -- don't rent the movie, now, read the book.
Mr. B*nds is abrasive and easy to dislike. The Lords of Baseball were hoping for a perjury indictment which might have kept him from breaking the home run record. They didn't want B*nds to break this record almost as much as they earlier wanted McGwire and/or So-so to best Roger Maris' record. And for the same reason: Their bottom line.
So all hail King Barry.
And kudos also to Mr. Aaron -- whose statement played in the Giants' stadium on the night he was dethroned makes him an even bigger man than he was before.
Without even having to take HGH.
You may be interested in the take the Onion had on this subject...
Now I suppose I have to take a position. In order of highest to lowest:
Aaron, Bonds, Selig.
Curmudgeons point about legality is the sticking point for me. I'm going to err on the side of a record aided by breaking a law, isn't a record that I want to argue.
Aaron was, and to an extent now, is not, a friendly guy. He had and has a bunch of reasons. He was a latter day Jackie Robinson and Willie Mays. Put bluntly, he got a lot of shit from every direction around him. He stood up to it and prevailed.
With Bonds, I'm not a purist. Given my choice, I'd put Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame. Rotten, dishonest guy and one of the great baseball players of all time. My differentiation between the two is that the "rottennence" and law breaking of Rose did not enhance his game. Bonds enhanced his production by breaking the law, surly personality aside.
The worst of the bunch is/are Selig and his fellow owners. As Curmudgeon says, they hid what they knew, and still hide it. They promoted all of the users of enhancement drugs back in the Nineties. Only now that that culture is unpopular, do they disapprove of it.
I found some typos in my comment which I can't edit in Blogger. Sorry and a curse on you Blogger. Can't I expect more for no money?
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