Ricky Blue

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RICKY BLUE

Baseball, Bonds, and the Immortal Bard

If Shakespeare were alive he would be a baseball fan.

Baseball is a game of suspense, drama and irony like none other: a titanic struggle of character and character flaws; and this season, of hubris: "Vaulting ambition, which o'erleaps itself and falls on the other side."

Shakespeare gave us Macbeth and baseball has given us Barry Bonds, who is defying the gods by threatening to break Babe Ruth's lifetime 714-home run total and moving into the number-two spot after Hank Aaron's total of 755. By the end of the season he could realize his "vaulting ambition" to become The Home Run King.

But many see him as an Enron of baseball, because all those big numbers could evaporate like a mirage. A new book claims that Barry's success has been due to cheating.

As if he said:

"I'll just take a little of this under my tongue and shoot a little of that into my heinie and suddenly a Texas leaguer will sail all the way into the Bay. Hello! Super-size me!"

So what will Baseball do with its 41-year-old Frankenslugger?

If Bonds gets away with this. will we see genetically modified baseball players by 2020? Or will baseball draw a line, forcibly confiscate blood and urine and strip him of his records like they do in that police state of wholesomeness known as The Olympics?

Bonds might reply:

"Our bodies our selves - if I think the Home Run Crown is a good trade for a pair of nano-testes, that's my business."

Many people have trouble accepting that Bonds is the equal of Babe Ruth. We're invoking a name synonymous with baseball here - like Elvis and rock'n roll. Tubthumping editorials abound. And late-night comics are making jokes. But imagine if today's media was around in Babe Ruth's time?

Comic: "Apparently yesterday when the Babe held a finger up toward the stands he wasn't indicating that he was about to hit a home run, he was actually trying to order a beer."

In Philadelphia, fans jeered Bonds recently with a clever sign that said: "The Babe did it on hot dogs and beer."

But Bonds could respond: "Hey, in the Babe's time beer was a banned substance too - during prohibition. And these days a hot dog probably contains more chemicals than Ben Johnson. So back at ya! And another thing, the Babe hit 714 home runs in a time when no Afro-Americans were allowed in the major leagues. Now there was an unfair advantage!"

Babe Ruth did play in another era entirely. Perhaps back then fans would have simply given Barry a nickname like 'Bean Balls' or more likely: Barry 'Big Head' Bonds. Because here is the part Shakespeare would have really liked: they say that the chemicals have enlarged his head, physically and mentally.

Babe Ruth was so well-liked that when the Red Sox traded him to the Yankees they were cursed for over eighty years; only recently exorcized. Now that Barry is breaking Ruth's record, perhaps the curse has been passed on to him; according to some his dislikeable rudeness and mood swings are due to the very substances that big him up.

So, at the same time as he becomes the home run king the whole world turns against him. Now isn't that a poetic justice to warm the heart of a playwright like the immortal Bard?