Steroid Competition

There’s a new book out saying that Barry Bonds used steroids devotedly, starting in 1998, the year Mark McGwire broke the single season home run record. Bonds has been injured recently. Bonds has been talking about retirement: he’s more than old enough by baseball standards. I’ve been speculating, including online, about whether there might be pressure on him to retire: in the light of the steroid allegations. He hasn’t been caught, nothing’s been proved, but he has been tarnished. The whole age has been tarnished.

Babe Ruth’s famous record was aided by a number of changes in the game specifically designed to aid Ruth’s home run rampages: a new ball, a new customized Yankee Stadium. It’s not that baseball has never been monkeyed with. Baseball has always been monkeyed with. But steroids, that’s another kind of cheating. Ruth’s advantages were manifestly natural: and were connived at by the sport itself: the team, the league, the public. Steroids too were connived at, but not openly.

So: does Bonds belong on the same stage with Ruth, with Aaron? Does McGwire? Bonds doesn’t just have the great bod, the great strength. He can see the ball, he’s coordinated. Most important, he has the patience, the judgment. He can wait on the ball, then unleash. In that he belongs on the stage with anybody. Ah, but the steroids.

On the one hand, if Arnold, why not Barry? If Mark, why not Barry? But here’s another angle, one sympathetic to Bonds. McGuire hit 70 home runs in 1998. Did he do it on Wheetina? Never mind what the public thinks, or thought; these are guys in the dugouts, they have their own grapevine. Should Bonds compete without steroids if important records are being broken with them? 1998 is not 1928.

I say let them compete in their own times. And stop taking records so seriously. I don’t trust that ANY of our records are accurate.
I don’t trust God to keep accurate records. But I trust God’s records to be far more accurate than ours.

I look forward to a time where our records would be compared to God’s: to our sorrow I bet.
But then I look even more forward to the time when God’s judgment comes up for judgment by the god he may not even realize is keeping tabs.

Then I suspect all the gods’ records will just evaporate: before no gods. Just swallowed in infinite time.