so international superstar and poseur extraordinaire marc ecko is the dude that bought Barry’s record breaking home run ball. that’s right, I said it - record breaking. like him or hate him, the guy has hit 756+ home runs.
now ecko, in his quest to appear deviant without actually doing anything wrong (remember the air farce one tag video) has put up a site where you can vote on what happens to the ball - either he donates it to the hall, marks it and donates it, or destroys it - http://www.vote756.com
while I am not a rabid baseball fan, Barry fan, or even sports fan, I do believe in the spirit of sport, and I don’t believe ecko is doing anything here in the best interest of any of these things.
talk about moral grandstanding - this fucker surely doesn’t give a shit about the spirit of the game, the weight of the accomplishment, or what Barry did (or didn’t do), nor what anyone who cam before him surely did (and they certainly did.)
first of all, there are some bottom line technicalities. the most important being that steroids were not against the rules, so if that’s your only beef against Barry, you have no case. what we all pretty know for sure is that Barry was on the juice, so does that somehow taint the record? that’s only if you assume everyone else was clean. guess what - we know that’s not true either. guys have been doping up for as long as dope has existed. manufactured advantages have always been present. you could argue with greater success that this type of ‘cheating’ is actually part of the game!
there are a couple other important perspectives to consider when you look at the old record, and Barry’s record now. first of all, when Hank Aaron was on his chase (you could argue his whole career), it was only partially about baseball. the guy was fighting real racism. real hate. people did not want him to succeed, much less own the Babe’s record.
the baseball part of Barry’s chase was one of those runs against an unbreakable record. you could give any other player every manufactured advantage in the book and there is a good chance they couldn’t get it done. the social aspect was this idea that Barry was not a good enough person to replace Aaron - the man who fought racism with baseball.
Barry doesn’t have a platform, except ‘I Love Barry’. but so what. No one forgot Babe Ruth. No one is going to forget Hank Aaron. Barry Bonds is now part of baseball.
we already have an unresolvable argument when comparing players from different eras. you can’t do it, since EVERYTHING is different. Ruth was the first home run king, because before him, no one gave a shit about home runs. can you believe there were fans that felt Ruth was fucking with the fabric of the game by hitting the ball out of the park? add to this the fact that skills at each position change over time (pitchers get better and worse, the science of hitting makes strides, the rules change to open up or close the game, etc.)
Barry Bonds is the greatest home run hitter of his era. He has hit more home runs in his career than anyone else. These are separate assertions that happen to go together. Neither discounts the accomplishments or personas of Babe Ruth or Henry Aaron.
ecko wants to steal a slice of this pie, because let’s face it - most people don’t know who the fuck he is, and most of those probably don’t even care. the guy is finally getting to live out his ‘abused skater boi revenge againse the jocks’ fantasy, dangling this piece of leather and twine that only has value to those truly fanatical people who hold baseball and sport as religion in front of them like a carrot, screaming ‘look at me, look at me.’
don’t fuck with baseball - you haven’t done anything to deserve a piece of it.
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