erniefreeman's Blog

Maybe they are starting to come around. Monday on ESPN's 1st and 10, Skip Bayless talked about the San Diego fans cheering Bonds' 755th homerun. When you compare that to the sports columnists and the ESPN heads dire predictions of the fans on the road booing Bonds, maybe Bayless' comment makes sense. "Maybe we're (columnists) are out of touch with the fans," Bayless said. Skip, you could not have said it better. My point exactly. You ARE out of touch. In the last two years, 130 minor league players have tested positive for "performance enhancing" drugs. More than 60 are pitchers, including the pitcher who served up 755 to Bonds. The man has had no unfair advantage. Just because YOU (ESPN heads, columnists, Jim Rome, et al) don't like him, doesn't mean he's a bad guy and I shouldn't like him.
Let it go.

Not going to comment on the alleged use of 'performance enhancing drugs' at all. Lets compare apples to apples though. Bonds has played how many more games than Aaron? How many more than Babe Ruth? How many games in a season now, compared to Ruth & Aaron's times? If you put an asterisk beside Bonds' record, make it for number of games being the deciding factor, not anything else!

I think Aaron actually had waaaaay more at bats than Bonds. Not sure about Ruth. We could check the stats. But what about all the intentional wallks Bonds has gotten. More than Ruth and Hammerin Hank.

Not sure about the intentional walks, but I do believe that is more prevalent in current times than it was back in Ruth's time! We probably should check the records and compare. I'd be really interested to see the results of that...

It's actually closer than I thought. And Bonds play significantly more games than Ruth. 2,958 games for Bonds, 2,503 games for the Babe. That translates into a huge advantage for Bonds in at bats, when compared to the Babe.
9,774 at bats for Bonds.
8,399 at bats for Ruth.
That's more than 1,300 additional at bats for Bonds. But where do you add those additional at bats? If you give Ruth the additional games at the end of his career, would he have been in shape to swing the bat. So, just because Barry had more at bats, doesn't mean we should minimize his accomplishment.

Ok, now that we've cleared that up...

"Performance Enhancement" substances, outside of steroids specifically, are not necessarily against the laws of baseball, or at least they haven't been until recently. So, is it worth even discussing a comparison? Babe Ruth used performance enhancing beer...LOL... !

And no, Babe was not in 'shape' to have had an additional 1,300 at bats towards the end of his career.