On Bonds and Home Run Records

Laura Fulmer told me at church the other evening that she missed reading my columns. So she’s the one!

Anyway, I have had a few random things on my mind of late that I felt like sharing. Here’s one of them:

Did you see Barry Bonds hit home run number 756 last Tuesday night? I haven’t been actively keeping up with it, but when I laid down that night, ESPN was showing the progress of his second at-bat of the game against the Washington Nationals, so I flipped over to ESPN2 to watch.

During that time up, he hit a double to right-center. I went back to watching some other mindless drivel, the news I think, before going back to the game a little while later.

The game was now in the bottom of the fourth inning and Bonds was something like two hitters away when out three was recorded.

Sure enough, I fell asleep during the top of the fifth and missed it. As my stepson Sam likes to say, “Darnigle!”

Anyway, when I got up Wednesday morning, I saw online where he had hit the record breaker. I wore my Giants cap (purchased only because Megan played for the Giants in the coach-pitch league) to the radio station that morning. Guess it was my tacit recognition of the new record-holder.

Say what you will about the legitimacy of Bonds’ record, but if you are a baseball fan at all, you’ve gotta at least recognize the awesomeness (is that a word?) of anyone hitting that many home runs. This ain’t a Sunday walk in the park, folks. Whether or not you’ve had the help of ‘roids, it’s still mighty hard to hit a small, round ball that is being thrown at you at speeds around 90 miles an hour some 320-450 feet in the opposite direction. For Bonds to have done just that 757 times now (as of this writing) is pretty incredible.

I was seven years old when Henry Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s record of 714 home runs in April of 1974. Needless to say, we didn’t have all the cable, satellite and Internet options we have now, so I didn’t see that one live either. One of the few things I vividly remember about Aaron’s record-breaker was thinking how odd it was that those two guys ran out on the the field and was patting Aaron on the back as he rounded the bases. Nowadays, those two would probably be maced or shot or something before they could even get between the lines.

As I look back now, I’m ashamed of all the stuff Aaron had to go through from the ignorant bigots who called him names, made threats against him and his family and sent him hate mail for the sole reason that his skin color was different from theirs. That was the cloud that hung over the record when it was broken 33 years ago. How sad.

I’m still conflicted about how I feel now that Bonds statistically holds the home run record. Folks say that Bonds has cheated, although nothing has been proven as of yet. Also, baseball did not have a testing system in place when Bonds allegedly was using performance enhancers, so can you really say you cheated if what you did was not against the rules?

At the end of the day, I realize that who has the home run record and whether or not an asterisk is attached to it is so far down the list of things to be concerned about that it barely merits serious discussion.

I think I’ll leave it like this. Barry Bonds may have the record, but Hammerin’ Hank will always be the home run King to me.

Who knew?!?

http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,288841,00.html

Did you happen to see this story?

Check it out.

Who knew the Pope read my column! :-D

Seriously, I don't think that at all but I do think it's funny that a few people really got angry with me because of their interpretation of something I wrote.

The priest at the local Catholic church here in Fayette wrote a letter to the editor saying things like I was bashing other people's religion and calling for a spirit of unity among believers.

Reckon he'll write back and make apologies for the Pope for seemingly doing the same thing? Doubt it.

Anyway, I just thought it was funny that the Pope said Catholics were the only true Christians.

Makes me recall a funny question I read once: If the Pope is infallible, how do you explain his choice of hats?

Have a pleasant remainder of your day.

I Have The Power!!! Whaa ha ha!!!

Ok, so now I'm joining the blog ranks. Big whoop, right?

I want to use this space to ramble on about things that I either cannot or will not write about in the newspaper for which I'm currently employed, The Times-Record.

In the three months or so I've been working for the newspaper, I have managed to stir things up on a couple of different issues. It's been somewhat of an eye-opening experience in that I never really thought people gave a rip about what I thought...or wrote.

The first example was when I wrote an editorial about the shenanigans surrounding a couple of allegedly Christian groups here in Alabama. The Christian Coalition of Alabama and Christian Action Alabama. These groups, who I'm sure have served a positive purpose at some point, have seemingly gone off the deep end. On one hand you have the Christian Coalition of Alabama supporting a bill (that recently died in the state legislature) that would allow gambling, while on the other hand you have Christian Action Alabama playing keep-away with records they took when they left the Christian Coalition to start the new group. That last ditty prompted a lawsuit, with CCA suing CAA. Keeping up here?!?

Well, in the article, I pointed out that one would think the head of an organization that alleges to represent Christians and monitor issues Christians should be concerned about, would actually be led by someone who was a Christian to begin with.

Trouble with that was that earlier in the article, I pointed out the the former head of CCA and the current head of CAA, John Giles, had converted to Catholicism. Some of my Catholic friends made the jump that by saying these two things separately, I was saying that Catholics aren't Christians. Nevermind that I was saying that both of these guys sure weren't acting like Christians. I'm not sure how many of those folks are still mad at me, but I hope they've gotten over it.

To quote one of my radio heroes, Paul Harvey, "Page Two."

Today, I receive an email saying that I single handedly put fireworks vendors in Fayette County out of business!

The back story of this one is an article I wrote talking about the Drought Emergency that has been issued for a large part of the state and also includes restrictions on certain kinds of fireworks.

After initially saying all fireworks were illegal to discharge during the Drought Emergency, the State Forestry Commission backed off some; allowing ground-based fireworks. The official line was something to the effect of sky rockets with sticks and any kind of rocket or missile with fins or rudders were still illegal to discharge. Now work with me here...if you read that, isn't it safe to say that any reasonably thinking person would take that to mean that if it's fireworks that fly, they were illegal...or banned from being discharged?!?

The person that sent the email said that because I wrote that "in other words, anything that can fly is still banned," I put the fireworks vendors out of business! Who knew I had that kind of power?!?

Never mind that the fireworks stand closest to my house has a sign out front saying "WE'RE OPEN!! BAN HAS BEEN LIFTED!!" Guess the operators think that folks just stay at home after reading something I've written and aren't smart enough to go see whether or not they can still buy fireworks. They never quit selling them...I didn't say they had...I just pointed out what the State Forestry folks said about what you could and couldn't legally shoot. Guess if somebody gets a citation for starting a woods fire because they read that I said some fireworks were still legal, I'll get blamed for that, too.

Just another day in my world. Had I known that I had the power to condemn an entire denomination to hell and shut down an industry county-wide, I'dve taken this job years ago. I'd surely be President by now!