Ruth or Bonds

[billandgitana]

Who will be remembered as the greatest home run hitter of all time

Some evening in late spring or early summer, Major League Baseball will come face to face with its ultimate nightmare, the shame of its lies and evasions on gaudy full-screen display.That's the moment a gimpy, sulky, bulky 41-year-old named Barry Bonds struts around the bases after hitting his seventh home run of 2006 and the 715th of his career. He will have passed the game's iconic Babe Ruth for No. 2 in lifetime homers.

I suggest the scoreboard light up with the following message:

"Mr. Bonds and baseball's executives would like to thank the makers of Winstrol ... Deca-Durabolin ... human growth hormone ... trenbolone ... insulin ... testosterone decanoate, Clomid and Modafinil for this historic moment. Thank you, chemists of the world!"

And before Bonds disappears into the dugout, I would hope several people would share in the adulation for Bonds. They would include MLB Commissioner Bud Selig, leaders of the baseball players union, executives of the San Francisco Giants, Bonds' former manager Dusty Baker, owners of all other big-league teams present, the drug experts of Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative, and assorted TV and print journalists.

Many conspirators

They were co-conspirators in Bonds' inglorious achievement. By turning away with sly winks, they were enablers who created the Great Home-Run Drug Fraud.

We know about Bonds now - and the drugs he used, named above - because of the book Game of Shadows by San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, excerpted in Sports Illustrated this week under the blazing cover, "The Truth." The book nails Bonds cold.

We know that Bonds, jealous of Mark McGwire's power splurge and fame in 1998, began injecting and ingesting enough drugs to fill a pharmacological warehouse until he had a King Kong physique and his own records.

"You're talking about something that wasn't even illegal at the time," Bonds said last spring. "Man, it's not like this is the Olympics."

Nope, it was an open-air drug bazaar. We know enough to surmise that chemical cheating in the decade of the Bonds-McGwire-Sammy Sosa homer hype was as dishonorable as the Black Sox scandal in 1919 to throw the
World Series. Only a few cynics cared. Because of owners' greed for profit and fans' love for cheap thrills, baseball didn't invoke even a weak drug-testing rule until 2002, later toughened by congressional threat.

Now you read forlorn advice: "Just walk away, Barry," or "Ban Barry Bonds from Baseball." Forget it, neither is going to happen. Thus, baseball's guilt will be on glaring exhibit when Bonds passes Babe Ruth and stalks Hank Aaron's all-time 755-homer mark.

Don't expect embarrassed humility from Barry. After he broke his godfather Willie Mays' record, Bonds said: "The only number I care about is Babe Ruth's. Because as a left-hand hitter, I wiped him out. ... And in the baseball world, Babe Ruth is everything, right? I got his slugging percentage and I'll take his home runs and that's it. Don't talk about him no more."

Can't be replaced

Wipe Ruth out? Even if he hit 1,000 homers, the chance of Bonds eclipsing Babe Ruth as the most famous player in history would be as slim as - well,
Bill Clinton or George W. Bush knocking Abraham Lincoln off his presidential shrine.

Look, it's futile entertainment to compare athletes of different eras. Who was greater: Jack Johnson or Muhammad Ali, Wilt Chamberlain or Michael Jordan, Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods? So I'll let baseball's legion of addicts bicker over the hitting numbers, Bonds vs. Babe.

I'd submit that Ruth had one edge as a complete player. Before he became the Yankee home-run attraction, he was a superb Red Sox pitcher who won 18, 23 and 24 games in 1915-17. Unless Bonds develops a fast ball, he can't match Ruth as a World Series winner as hurler and slugger. I agree, though, that Ruth played in an all-white game while Barry's modern era of black, Latino and Asian players is faster, more athletic.

Because of the drug allegations - not his churlish, self-absorbed attitude - I wouldn't vote for Bonds when he's Hall of Fame eligible in 2011. He's done as much damage to his sport as Pete Rose did.

True, Ruth was a lousy role model, too. Once I asked an old Yankee catcher named Benny Bengough about rooming with Ruth. "I didn't room with the Babe. I roomed with his suitcase," he told me. Ruth was a clownish, profane man, a world-class skirt-chaser who stuffed himself with hot dogs and bootleg whiskey. "I like to live as big as I can," Ruth bragged.

But Bonds' jab at Ruth is absurd. Ruth is a legend, the subject of at least two movies (portrayed by William Bendix and John Goodman) and a slew of books (the best is Robert Creamer's Babe). He personified the Jazz Age. His homer blasts changed sports much like the forward pass changed football. He was funny. Asked why his annual-salary demand (of $80,000) should top President Hoover's, Ruth said, "I had a better year than he did."

Ruth will always be a folk hero, Bonds a tainted pariah. It didn't have to be that way. When I saw Bonds play a few innings last year, he seemed a limping, fat old man, a figure of sadness, not triumph.

On the night Bonds breaks Ruth's record, let the Lords of Baseball stand up and share the dishonor. The Juice Era that Bonds symbolizes was their handicraft. Their greed, guile and lack of guts was a drug, too.