SAGE ADVICE: Like a broken record

I was kind of hoping that just maybe No. 756 wouldn’t happen.
It’s never fun to see history being altered. It’s decidedly less so when those alterations are made under a cloud of suspicion. But it happened. How much of a role steroids played in it is anyone’s guess. If it hadn’t been steroids, though, it would have been something. Smaller parks, lower mounds, juiced balls, weakened pitching staffs due to expansion. Something would have induced asterisk talk. No one wants to see a classy player like Hank Aaron lose a record to a guy like Barry Bonds, whatever that might mean.
For anything else it might have been, it felt like the Mark McGwire chase all over again. I remember sitting in a bar outside Fort Lauderdale, watching McGwire break the single-season homerun record. I think my buddy and I might have been the only ones in the whole place not clapping. Even then, before we all figured it out, before we had the head-slapping, that’s-why-he’s-so-darned-big-now moment, I didn’t like the idea of someone topping Roger Maris’ 61. Some of the sports writers, probably the same ones who are now dressing themselves in sack clothes and whatnot, back then said that that was the moment that saved the game, that that was the thing the game needed to stay alive, that that McGwire cat was every bit as important to modern-day Major League Baseball as Cal Ripken Jr.
Whaaa? 
They were lying then, just as they are lying now about how a thug like Bonds doesn’t deserve the record. They are right, from what I can gather, that Bonds is a thug. But he deserves the record. Real fans will always debate the facts of any statistic. Even if Bonds’ head and feet hadn’t grown from the time he was a scrawny leadoff hitter for the Pirates, even if no one suspected him of being as juiced as the balls thrown to him, true fans would debate. His record, like almost every other, will always be subject to the “yeah buts.” Yeah but he’s playing in an era with smaller parks. Yeah but he’s playing in a world with lower mounds. Et cetera.
Aside from the slightly dyspeptic feeling Bonds’ record thrusts on me, the only real problem I have is the hoopla being made over it. The record is a fun one, dominated largely by two men until Bonds, but it’s not baseball.
San Francisco Giants manager Bruce Bochy told the press after the game that “This is the greatest record in all of sports.”
Er – not quite. As a Giant or Giant’s fan, you do have to say that. After all Bonds is the only reason anyone would go see a game in San Francisco. Even then, not many would turn out if the slugger wasn’t chasing some record, be it Aaron’s, McGwire’s or his own.
Since I’m not a Giant’s fan by any stretch of the imagination, I can say that the home run tally isn’t even the greatest record in baseball, much less all of sports. Forget about all those Richard Petty victory laps, the all-but unbreakable 215 goals scored in a single season by Wayne Gretzky, Rocky Marciano’s undefeated career or Lance Armstrong’s conquering of France.
Despite what certain owners and the more shallow fans might think, baseball is not defined by the long ball. Sure, 756 is impressive, and it seats Bonds in elite company, but not at the head of the table. That space is reserved for the people who did things unimaginable, on or off steroids. Men like Ty Cobb, who by all accounts was easily as big of a jerk as Bonds, and his unreal .367 lifetime batting average. Men like Pete Rose, whose personal problems have kept him out of the Hall of Fame, with his 4,256 hits. Men like, yes, Ripken, who might be the exception to the rule in that he isn’t a big fat jerk, with his 2,632 consecutive games.
But even those players, giants with a lowercase “g,” can’t touch the two greatest baseball records, and maybe, just maybe, the greatest sports records of all times, no matter what Bochy would lead you to believe. There’s a slight chance that someone somewhere a long time from now might tie Johnny Vander Meer’s record back-to-back no-hitters. But no one will beat it. If they do, I’ll be the first to call for that much talked about asterisk, because if some pitcher, especially in the era of lower mounds and expansion teams, throws three consecutive no-hitters something akin to the Chicago White Sox 1919 World Series loss must have occurred.
Then there is the record Bochy must have been thinking off. That’s Cy Young’s 511 career wins. Surely that’s what he meant when he said “This is the greatest record in all of sports.”
It is nearly mathematically impossible for any pitcher today, even assuming steroids could keep in the game for a dozen or so extra years, to reach the 500-win level. Only 23 pitchers in history have notched 300 victories. In fact, Young is the only pitcher to record 500 wins. The next highest, Walter Johnson, won “only” 417 and so far is the only pitcher to win more than 400 games in a lifetime.
By the way, don’t look for any Giants to near the 500-win mark, at least not while Bonds is on the roster. While everyone was watching the home run king’s swing the Nationals won by two runs.