Quick Slants - Stuff To Be Thankful For

I am personally thankful for each and every one of the following:

That my name isn’t Barry Bonds or Michael Vick.

That I’m nowhere near a retail outlet of any sort on the day after Thanksgiving.

That I’m not in charge of spinning Nick Saban’s latest verbal gaffe.

That, of all the names that will be published in George Mitchell’s report on steroids in baseball, mine won’t be one of them.

That I’m not a member of the Philadelphia Eagles and traveling to Foxboro this weekend.

That I’m not Isaiah Thomas.

That it ain’t me getting blowed up by Mo-Jo Drew on Youtube.

That I’m not Scott Boras.

That I’m not Stephon Marbury.

That I’m not the guy who signed Priest Holmes and Larry Johnson to big money contract extensions.

That I’m not the guy who gave Ahman Green a big ol’ pile of cash.

That I’m not the head coach of the worst Notre Dame football team in school history.

That I’m not Lloyd Carr.

That I’ll only get about a billion fewer questions about coaching at Michigan than Les Miles will.

That I have never driven to Wendy’s naked and drunk.

That I don’t have 9 different children by 9 different women.

That I’m not about to serve a 4 game suspension for smoking the herb.

That I’m not being reinstated after being suspended for smoking the herb.

That I’m not being reinstated to the worst team in history after being suspended for smoking the herb.

That I’m not the guy paying A-Rod $275 million over the next 10 years.

That I’m not a Bulls season ticket holder.

That I’m not the guy who had to set the largest point spread in NFL history and get his bosses to sign off on it.

That I’m not the guy who signed off on the largest point spread in NFL history.

That I don’t own the Vikings, Adrian Peterson notwithstanding.

That I don’t own the Supersonics, Kevin Durant notwithstanding.

That I’m not a Steinbrenner heir...as far as I know...

That I’m not the guy who has to revise all those Elias Baseball Abstracts when Barry Bonds does a perp walk and gets the Kennesaw Mountain Landis boot.

That I’m not Bud Selig.

That I’m not Bud Selig.

That I’m not Bud Selig. (Trust me, it bore repeating.)

That our next president will not be a woman.

That I don’t live in Los Angeles, the second-largest market in the U.S., and no pro football team to speak of, U.S.C. notwithstanding.

That I don’t have to share a locker room with Kobe Bryant.

That I haven’t won the Tour De France in the last decade.

That I haven’t won a gold medal in the Olympics in anything in the last two decades.

That I’m not the damn near unintelligible NFL analyst Emmitt Smith, an alleged Florida graduate.

That I’m not whoever was responsible for putting the NHL into WitSec with The Erasernator.

That I don’t live in a state that has twice elected actors (!!) as Republican governors.

That I don’t hang out with Pac-Man Jones, not even on accident.

That I’m not whoever was responsible for the abortion otherwise known as “D-War.”

That I’m not whoever was responsible for the crowd noise in Indianapolis.

That I’m not whoever was responsible for releasing “Grindhouse” on Easter Weekend...I mean, really...

That I’m not whoever was responsible for the Homeland Security Department (gee, thanks a bunch, Dubya...idiot).

That I’m not the Republican that will lose by 48 states in the next presidential election.

That I’m not one of the few remaining thousands ducking the hail of bullets in Detroit, recently voted the U.S.’s most dangerous city...

That I'm not one of the few remaining thousands ducking the hail of bullets in Detroit, recently voted as the U.S.'s second-most dangerous city, after, of course, Detroit.

That I'm not looking for a house, a car, or a job in Detroit.

That this isn’t a political column.

Sometimes.

That I’m not the guy who has to live with banning alcohol on team flights and sponsorships from Anheuser-Busch and Miller...not that there’s a conflict of interest or anything, I’m just sayin’...

That I’m not a New York Knicks season ticket holder.

That I’m not a New York Knicks season ticket holder.

That I’m not a New York Knicks season ticket holder. (See Selig, Bud.)

That NASCAR will never overtake MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) in the public eye, because if there’s one thing that rednecks love more than pro wrestling and flaming car wrecks, it’s genuine and bloody whupass on pay-per-view.

And finally, that for all of my carping, sports remain a refuge in a vast sea of entertainment “meh” because I remain fully convinced that at least some of the people are trying some of the time.

Don’t believe me? Just ask that helmet-shaped bruise in the middle of Shawne Merriman’s rib cage...heh heh heh...

For The Record, Part 2

This is the second of 2 articles pondering the significance of Barry Bonds breaking the all-time home run record.

A most amazing thing happened after Barry Bonds broke Hank Aaron's home run record.

Aaron himself appeared on video to congratulate Bonds for the achievement.

Aaron, who had steadfastly refused to say anything positive or negative about Bonds as the latter approached the Holy Grail of baseball records, recorded nothing less than an eloquent and dignified congratulatory speech that really put the capper on the occasion.

Never mind that Aaron never should have had to go through this indignity in the first place.

This act by Aaron highlights his character and his generation.

You see, Aaron came up in an era in which black folks didn't air each other's dirty laundry in public, because that just ain't what people did.

Aaron came up in an era in which black folks believed that decent character would eventually win out, despite the evils being perpetrated against them. It didn't matter if another black man was less than perfect. In that era, all black men were united against a common foe: white society.

We cannot make too little of this. Laws existed that restricted a black man's freedoms, even his pleasures. Laws existed that restricted a black man's movements and ability to earn. And those were the ones that were on the books.

Other laws existed regarding such improprieties like a black man cutting his eyes at a white woman, or offering impertinence to a white person, that were paid for in blood after dark.

As a joke of the era went, one black man would ask another, "How you doin'?"

The other would reply, "White folks still in the lead..."

At which both would laugh, or grunt, or not in sympathy.

One did not throw another black man under the bus in Aaron's era, not when there was a common enemy more than willing to throw both the accused and the accuser under the bus together.

So Aaron did what he'd grown up doing: he forgave another man.

When Aaron endured death threats and insults of the vilest kind, when FBI protection had to be afforded to his daughter, when he had to be escorted by an armed policeman as he approached Babe Ruth's mark, he forgave.

He could have spoken out like so many black athletes of that time did...but they were younger, weren't they? They weren't riding buses in the Jim Crow South of the 1950s. Those athletes were children in the 60s when Malcolm X was assassinated; to them, the battle had always been fought that way. For Aaron, for the generation prior to that, the battle had been won by being the better man.

That bears repeating: the battle had been won by being the better man.

Aaron has publicly and privately spoken about carrying on the example that Jackie Robinson set, professionally and personally.

When the obviously chemically-enhanced Barry Bonds broke his record, he could have reviled, just as Robinson could have reviled when the Phillies gave him the kind of insults that might have made a modern hood rat "catch a case."

Instead, as he'd done throughout his career, throughout his life, Henry Aaron chose to take the higher road.

In doing so, he forever provided a poignant reminder of the gulf of character that exists between himself and the eternally-tainted Bonds.

And, quoting the very first words out of his mouth when he finally broke Babe Ruth's record,

"Thank God it's over."

For The Record, Part 1

This is the first of two articles reflecting on Barry Bonds' becoming baseball's all-time home run king.

I saw the dinger.

THE dinger.

Number 756.

Any way you say it, the number demands a certain respect.

And yet, I find myself feeling weird right now.

Not ambivalent, but weird.

There's just something wrong when such a colossal indignity is committed publicly and nothing is done about it.

While something may yet be done is really immaterial. After all, no matter what the NCAA and the Big Ten may say about Michigan's tainted records with the Fab Five, we all saw freshmen play in the NCAA Championship Game. All the money that any boosters might have given them didn't make them better players, only richer. We saw them. They existed. Their deeds occurred in real life. We have chosen to ignore their deeds because of off-court malfeasance, but that's really it, isn't it?

We choose to ignore what really happened.

In other words, we're trying to edit reality.

Barry Bonds, most certainly chemically-enhanced, really hit his 756th career home run.

I will not recount the evidence against him, mountainous though it is.

All I can say is that, whatever we may choose to do with his record, it is now finally his, now and forever.

Any future discussion of home run kings will inevitably have to mention him, because, love him or hate him, he still had to face major league pitching and hit the baseball out of the yard 756 times, more than anyone else.

An asterisk only tempts us to alter reality, just like the asterisk that haunted Roger Maris to his death. The fact is that Maris hit more home runs than Babe Ruth in a season, number of games be damned. Maris didn't make the schedule, any more than Ruth did. Maris actually stood in and hit 61 home runs in a single season, more than any man before him and any man up to the benighted Mark McGwire.

When that asterisk was finally removed, we admitted what we already knew all along: Maris had really done what we had all seen him do.

Just as Pete Rose has done what we have all seen him do, some 4256 times. Rose's eligibility for the National Baseball Hall of Fame really doesn't matter, because the record he posted is unlikely to ever be broken. We can make him persona non grata at official baseball events, we can keep him from ever darkening the Hall's door, but his presence looms over the Hall because his record stands.

He actually hit a baseball safely 4256 times. There's only one other guy that has as many as 4000 career hits, and only one other guy after him that has as many as 3700 career hits.

This is where we are with Barry Bonds. We can choose not to put his records in the books, just like we do for Sadaharu Oh and Josh Gibson. In Gibson's case, we choose not to acknowledge his records because the white, er, right people didn't see them...never mind ample eyewitness testimony to the contrary. In Oh's case, his were only hit in Japan...as though hitting 800+ home runs in Japan is somehow easier than hitting 714 against competition that didn't include black pitchers.

I mean, it's too late for any recriminations now. It's too late to take anything back.

What? Are we going to go back through every one of Barry Bonds' home runs and magically erase them from the box score? Are we going to change the scores of the games in which those home runs occurred?

Let's not forget that all of those home runs did not occur in a vacuum, but within the context of a major league baseball season, which usually ends with a champion, absent Bud Selig's thumb-fingered interference. Bonds' teams haven't always been as bad as the current edition. What do we do to some deserving team that got cheated out of a victory because of a Bonds blast?

Send them roses? Offer an apology? Do some fantasy league crap and retroactively award them the playoff spot they didn't get because Bonds was hitting out of his mind for a chemically-enhanced season or two?

No, these 756 home runs really happened, because baseball let them happen.

And baseball let them happen because we let baseball let them happen.

Had we stood up and been counted, had we spoken with our wallets instead of our handwritten signs, this might have been averted.

Instead, we supported this charade. The more he hit, the more of us came to the yard and bought his jersey and signed up for the baseball package on our local cable providers and bought products advertised on baseball broadcasts...and Major League Baseball took note.

So they gave him a pass.

Instead of keeping him from the pinnacle of baseball records, they paved the way for him. Baseball drug its heels at ever investigating steroids, despite growing evidence that the drug was everywhere, then appointed a toothless investigator with no subpoena power to "look into the matter."

All that was a sham. All that was for our benefit.

Baseball only gave us what we wanted...then, and now.

Then, we wanted commercials that said "Chicks dig the long ball."

Now, we'll want asterisks...or expunged records...or some other equally faux punishment for things that really happened.

Barry Bonds has really hit 756 home runs.

This ain't the Matrix. We can't alter reality.

He really did it.

And it is our fault.

Coincidence and Baseball

I'm not a terribly old man (43), but I have been privileged to witness the fall of some significant sports hallmarks: the NFL all-time rushing mark, the NBA all-time scoring mark, the NHL all-time scoring mark, and anything belonging to Tiger Woods and scores relative to par in a major championship (not to mention the unofficial but never-to-be-duplicated Tiger Slam).

Why is it, then, that only baseball seems to suffer from such a vile cloud of infamy where its hallowed marks are concerned?

Think about it: the all-time hits mark belongs to Peter Edward Rose, a guy that most of us wouldn't want to be in the same room with...and he took it from Ty Cobb, a guy that would gleefully spike his own grandmother at second base.

Then there's the all-time home run record.

While Babe Ruth was hardly a paragon of virtue, he never broke the unwritten rules of baseball. He played hard and he lived hard and we loved him for it.

Henry Aaron, on the other hand, is everything a mother could want in a son, and a manager could want in a baseball player. While enduring segregation of the vilest sort, and living under the black shadow of death threats, like the John Henry myth from which he picked up his name, he simply picked up his hammer and went to work.

No record was won more honorably.

Which brings us to the lamentable Barry Lamar Bonds.

Up to his 35th birthday, there was no finer player in baseball, perhaps in baseball history. The numbers he put up were much like Aaron's in their metronome consistency. He'd already won three MVP awards and was suffering from Michael Jordan syndrome: sure, you're really the best player, but we really oughtta give it to some other guy.

That was then.

Now, a mammoth imposter wearing Bonds' jersey sits five home runs away from baseball's most hallowed record. Implausibly, his hat size has grown even as he has shaved his head, his jersey size has grown a mere 10 sizes since his first MVP award, and he has managed some 257 home runs since the age of 36, including a single-season record of 73.

Anyone remember Dale Murphy at 36? 2 home runs in 18 games, and none in 26 games the following season.

Mickey Mantle at 37? Retired.

To all this, add Barry Bonds' less-than-sparkling personality (somewhat south of Dave Kingman on a bad day), and we the perfect baseball storm.

Barry Bonds is at least an unrepentant narcissist, concerned only with those things that may happen to affect him on Barry-world, and dismissive of anything he deems beneath his attention...which is the rest of us.

However, given the anecdotal evidence that anyone can amass by doing a little Intergoogling, including what steroid usage will do to a person over time, it appears that Barry Bonds is also at least a criminal (as steroids are still against the law)...and he's about to break the all-time home run record belonging to a man whose class and reputation is beyond impeachment.

I guess my question is this: given that the all-time record holders in the other sports also seem to be exemplary characters in their private lives as well as their public lives, why is it that baseball seems to suffer from idiots at the top of their all-time charts?

No one has accused Dan Marino of anything more heinous than not winning a Super Bowl over his Hall-Of-Fame career, and certainly nothing since. Walter Payton lived and died with his reputation as a man, a father, and a hell of a football player intact. Emmitt Smith remains one of the few Cowboys of the Jimmie Johnson era whose face has not shown up on a police blotter. Wayne Gretzky has cast the kind of glare over his sport that only Tiger Woods has managed to duplicate, and neither of them has been guilty of anything but wanting to win all the time. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar remains the real pillar of the NBA, combining longevity with effectiveness in a way that escaped Wilt Chamberlain (due largely to Chamberlain's rather Ruthian excesses.)

Maybe I've answered my own question. Maybe these things are cyclical. After all, the previous all-time NFL rushing leader, Jim Brown, is a notorious woman beater, despite all of his community efforts. We've already mentioned Babe Ruth. Wilt Chamberlain was at least the narcissist that Barry Bonds currently is, even if Bonds hasn't quite slept with 10,000 women yet. Ty Cobb probably wasn't a serial murderer only because baseball payed better. Steve Carlton was a Fruit Loop escaped from the cereal box.

At any rate, here's hoping that Ichiro and A-Rod play for another twenty years...