Hank Aaron is No Longer the Home Run King...Live with It

Barry Bonds is your home run king, whether you like it or not.

So, it's come to this.

Bud Selig is publicly criticizing Alex Rodriguez for taking steroids. Fine, that's his job. The baseball commissioner is supposed to say that A-Rod "shamed the game."

It's ridiculous that he's considering disciplining Rodriguez when the tests were non-disciplinary. If he does that, he had better reveal and discipline the other 103 players on that list, too.

However, is he really going to strip Barry Bonds of the all-time home-run title? Really? Because that's ludicrous.

Why didn't Selig make this clear when Barry was about to claim the record? He wouldn't even have to imply guilt. A simple "if we ever find out that Mr. Bonds has in fact taken performance enhancing drugs, his title will be removed" would suffice.

It seems quite convenient that, two years removed from Bonds' breaking of the record, and right on the heels of a steroid scandal, suddenly Selig has found religion in terms of maintaining the integrity of baseball's home run record. This seems like a blatant public relations stunt to me.

Look, this has simply got to stop. Everyone was juicing in the steroids era...that's why it's called the steroids era! Pitchers were on the juice, hitters were on the juice, even bench players were on the juice.

Out of every one of those players juicing, how many hit more than 755 home runs? Exactly one. You don't make a hitter as good as Barry Bonds with performance enhancing drugs.

Steroids aren't a magical home run potion. Did Bonds take them? Probably. Is it really a competitive edge when everyone is taking steroids? Not really. You can't call it an edge when everyone else is doing the same thing.

Barry Bonds has hit 762 home runs in his career, and no amount of revisionist history is going to change that.

What really gets me isn't the revisionist history that's being pulled on Bonds, however. What gets me is that we're revising the history of Hank Aaron.

Did we all really forget? Hank Aaron was a cheater, too!

Classy Hank Aaron, the guy every baseball fan loves these days, took amphetamines to boost his performance when he played. He took performance-enhancing drugs. He should be removed from the record book by Selig's standards. If you're going to revise history, do it right, darn it!

So, I guess that makes our true home run king Babe Ruth, right?

But wait! Babe Ruth played in a segregated era! You can't call him the best, because he wasn't playing against the best competition, only the best white competition! No, Babe Ruth as home run king won't do.

Which leaves us with Willie Mays. I suppose Willie is our new home run king...he was a clean player who played in a clean era, and he racked up 660 home runs. Oh, wait, it can't be Willie Mays. He's Barry Bonds' godfather. Guilty by association, you know.

So there you have it, ladies and gentlemen, your home run king is Ken Griffey, Jr. 611 is the new number to beat, and with Griffey still playing, we can expect that number to grow. Only clean, integration-era players need apply! We wouldn't want our records to be tainted!

It's really a wonder that Bud Selig wasn't in attendance to see Griffey break Frank Robinson's previous record of 586 home runs. I always knew he was the wrong man for the Commissioner job. Griffey has really been piling on to that record, too. I don't think he'll ever be topped.

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