Barry and Babe.... and Hank.

So, it looks like Barry Bonds will pass Babe Ruth on the all time home run list. To which I say...

Big fat hairy deal.

One would think, from the way everyone is going on about this, that Ruth still held the home-run record. Even some journalists still think Ruth holds the record: in an article in the Peninsula (local) section of the San Jose Mercury News, Dan Reed wrote "[Bonds] failed to do what everyone wanted him to do -- tie the all-time home run record of Babe Ruth." Clearly, Mr. Reed needs to walk across the office and talk to the sportswriters occasionally. I can only imagine what they might have said about the article.

America is obsessed with Ruth. No one is ever good enough to match the Great One. Roger Maris played in a season that was too long: Ford Frick, the commissioner of baseball (and the man responsible for the 162 game season to begin with) decreed that Ruth's record had to be broken in 154 games or it wouldn't count. (He either ignored or conveniently forgot that the season Ruth set the single-season record, the Yankees played 155 games, because they had tied one earlier in the season.) Frick set this condition for no other season record. Bonds and before him McGwire and Sosa have all been tainted by the steroids scandals. There are those who argue that the record 73 home runs in a single season set by Bonds in 2001 is illegitimate.

Ruth played in smaller stadiums, without grueling travel schedules, during an era when a ball that bounced over the fence could be counted as a home run. More importantly, he played before the color line was broken: Ruth never had to face Negro League pitchers like Satchel Paige. Nothwithstanding, Ruth has always been seen as "America's home run king."

Except he's not.

Hank Aaron is.

Ruth is an "American"-type hero: brash, mythic, larger-than-life. Many of us with more than a passing acquaintance with baseball history are familiar with story of Ruth's "called home run" and his legendary carousing.

Hank Aaron, on the other hand, carries himself with quiet dignity. He is one of baseball's class acts. He pursued Ruth's record in the face of death threats from racists furious that a black man would dare sully the Bambino's legacy. He earned his record not in a blaze of glory but by remarkable consistency: while he never hit more than 47 home runs in one season, there were only three years, his first and his last two in the league, that he did not hit at least twenty. Furthermore, he not only exceeded Ruth's record, he obliterated it. He didn't pass Ruth's total by 5 homers, but by 5%.

There has never been a whiff of scandal or a hint of impropriety about Aaron. His record can't be dismissed as being the product of some pharmaceutical lab, or disparaged as being the result of simply a matter of more games per season.

Instead, he's simply ignored. It's surprising how many people still say "Babe Ruth's record..." even though the record hasn't been Ruth's for 32 years now. This entire circus surrounding Barry Bonds pursuit of second place is testament to how much Ruth still holds sway over the American imagination. It's a shame: if I would pick a ballplayer to represent me or my country, I would much prefer it be a man of courage and dignity like Aaron.

Let Barry Bonds pass Ruth on the home run list. It doesn't matter.

Let him reach, oh, 745 or 750, and then it will matter. Because then the issue of whether Bonds's home runs are tainted, the product of chemistry not talent, reflects on whether he should take the title from the true champion.