Wednesday, August 8th, 2007 by Adam Wagner
Let’s Finish This
[Ed. In light of recent events, we are bringing this post back from the archives.]
Barry Bonds’ chase of Hank Aaron’s legendary record is one of the most well-publicized stories in sports right now. This is mainly due to the fact that 755 is one of those numbers that the young baseball fan is bred on. I knew what 755, 56, .400, 3000, 511, and 300 meant before I knew my multiplication tables.
Those numbers gave fans a tangible connection to the game of the past, the game that their fathers and grandfathers watched as small boys, still in total awe of the man that 
could hit the sphere 450 feet and make the over-the-shoulder catch. The numbers allow fans to feel the constant presence of legends, know what it is like to be in awe of the performance of another man. Those figures purify the game, making what is really a business feel innocent, providing some connection to the first time that the small child steps onto the hard field for his first little league game, prepared to do nothing but succeed just as his heroes do every night on TV, just as his father’s heroes did thirty years ago on the radio, and his grandfather’s heroes did as he peered through a fence into the stadium.
This is why it feels wrong that Barry Bonds, a man who reportedly cheated the game of baseball, is ready to surpass one of those hallowed numbers. The issue is not that Bonds is a bad person, it is more that he has somehow managed to damage the trust of fans in the
game. His assault on the record is a constant reminder to fans of the scene that they saw nine summers ago, when Mark McGwire hit a soft liner over the left field wall at the old Busch Stadium for home run number 62, beating Sammy Sosa in their race to pass what had been one of those hallowed numbers, Roger Maris’ 61 homeruns. This scene would later be tainted by accusations of performance enhancing drugs by various sources, giving fans a feeling similar to the one that someone living next door to a serial killer must feel after they learn their neighbor’s secret. Fans of the game simply want to move on from those summers of too-large players performing nearly superhuman feats, not be constantly reminded that their heroes cheated the sanctity of the game that they worshiped in their childhood.
Barry Bonds, however, does not care that fans want to heal. He is a man with the desire to prove that he is, in fact, the greatest player to ever step onto a baseball field and feels that 
the only way to do this is to surpass 755, that magical number. He has been met with adversity every step of the way, from two reporters writing a book about his steroid use to Curt Schilling sounding off on how Bonds is cheating the game to being investigated by a federal grand jury for perjury and tax evasion. Bonds has looked all of these barriers straight in the eye and simply passed over them the same way that Brian Sabean has passed over the glaring weaknesses of his team to allow Bonds a chance at this record. He is insistent that he is going to remain around until he is satisfied with his accomplishments, which right now simply means breaking Aaron’s record.
It is the responsibility of Bonds, to the fans that love him and to the game that has given him everything that he and his family have, to retire at the end of this season, allowing the healing process to begin in earnest as the last superstar of the steroid era will have left the game for good. At that point in time, there will no longer be a shadow cast over every at-bat and every new record-setting moment. That small twinge of doubt at every new accomplishment will no longer exist, as all of the heroes of the steroid era will have ridden off into a silicon sunset and the superstars will be built more off of their talent than their trainers.
The flag-bearer of this new era will, undoubtedly, be Alex Rodriguez. His personality flaws have been well documented, but even Ty Cobb was seen as one of the greatest
baseball players ever. If anything, these flaws and the struggles he has experienced in New York will allow him to appear more innocent to the fans he will be trying to win back to the game. After all, Rodriguez is already the symbol of the new economic game of baseball, a feat that Scott Boras accomplished when he helped the young then-shortstop ink his infamous 10-year, $252 million contract with the Texas Rangers in the winter of 2000. The step up to face of the game will not be that much farther, as he will be vanquishing the villain Bonds from the record books in seven or eight years, when he begins to approach the record, assuming he stays healthy and maintains the same level of play.
Rodriguez is the player that the fans will be comfortable watching with their girlfriends, their children, their fathers, and their friends simply because instead of that knot in the stomach every time he strolls to the plate, there will be a feeling of triumph, a feeling that the white knight has arrived, prepared to wipe out a period of history that many wish had simply never happened, ready to make up new numbers for future generations to cherish.
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