Hank’s Right: Record Should Stay With Bonds

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↵There’s a growing sentiment amongst baseball purists that Bud Selig should use his powers to strip Barry Bonds of the all-time home run record, and reinstate Hank Aaron as its rightful owner. Selig himself has said that he is considering it. Regardless of what any of us may think of this, the man whose opinion matters the most on the subject is Aaron himself, who had this to say about it on Friday (excuse my tardiness -- I try to stay off the internet over the weekends):↵↵⇥“In all fairness to everybody, I just don’t see how you really can do a thing like that and just say somebody isn’t the record holder anymore, and let’s go back to the way that it was. ... ↵⇥↵⇥It’s probably the most hallowed record out there, as far as I’m concerned, but it’s now in the hands of somebody else. It belongs to Barry. No matter how we look at it, it’s his record, and I held it for a long time. But my take on all of this has always been the same. I’m not going to say that Barry’s got it because of this or because of that, because I don’t know.”↵⇥

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There are two ways of looking at this. One on hand, Aaron is an incredibly humble, respectful man, who wouldn’t dare make a scene by lobbying for the record to once again be his. On the other hand, perhaps Aaron actually believes that the record is Bonds’, and that’s how it should stay. The latter isn’t hard to imagine. Especially given Aaron’s explanation for his stance:↵↵⇥“Really, it’s sort of a tricky call when you start going down that road of who is legitimate,” Aaron said. “I don’t know if Barry would have hit as many home runs or hit them as far -- if that’s the case that he did use steroids -- but I still don’t think it has anything to do with him having the kind of baseball career that he had.”↵↵This is exactly why Selig shouldn’t mess with the record. We have no idea how much steroids actually help boost power numbers. If anything, what Bonds was taking likely had more impact on his ability to recover and put himself in the position to hit home runs, than the actual ability to knock the ball over the fence. This would obviously give him an unfair advantage, but how many home runs does that advantage account for? ↵↵That’s a question each fan should decide for themselves. But there is far too much gray area surrounding this record, and others, for the commission to begin stripping players of them. ↵

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