Harmon Killebrew: Why Barry Bonds and A-Rod Have Nothing on Late Twins Star

Harmon Killebrew Represented Everything That Baseball Should Be

Forget the Black Sox scandal, Pete Rose gambling on the Reds, and even the 1994 strike that cancelled the World Series. There's no plague upon the House of Baseball that even compares to the steroids epidemic of the last two decades.

Why? Because it not only infected the current status of the game--fans wondering aloud "Oh that guy hit 50 home runs? You think he's juicing?"--as well as the recent history, but it's casts a murky shadow over the entire history of the sport.

More so than any other game, baseball prides itself on raw numbers: 20 wins, .300 average, 3,000 hits, 500 home runs.

So we use those stats to measure the players of one generation against the players of another generation. It's the only common denominator.

That litmus test was already shaky enough: up until 1947 African-Americans weren't allowed to compete, so Babe Ruth never faced Satchel Paige, Bob Feller never faced Josh Gibson, etc. And with ball parks becoming smaller and the advent of the DH, a home run in 2011 isn't analogous to a home run in 1951.

Steroids are the straw that broke the camels back.

Sure Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, and Mark McGwire were great home run hitters (presumably) before  they roided up. But we can't be sure of the exact dates, how many home runs were "tainted," and what their career totals should be.

There aren't those types of questions about Willie Mays' 660 homers, or Warren Spahn's 363 wins or Ted Williams' .406 average. And there aren't those questions about the 573 home runs hit by Harmon Kilebrew, who passed away this week.

Hall of Famer, Kilebrew was never in that same class of super super super star ball players like Mays or Hank Aaron or even Roberto Clemente or Frank Robinson. Kilebrew never hit .300 in a season, didn't hit many doubles, was basically an average fielder at first base and didn't win a World Series.

But he did hit home runs at a tremendous clip, winning six AL home run titles and topped the 40-homer mark eight times.

Today those numbers would be very good but not necessarily mind boggling.

But more to the point, they would likely be met with great skepticism. People would want to know if Killer Killlebrew was on HGH or winstrol or whatever.

We know that Killebrew's numbers are authentic. We can't say that about Barry Bonds' 762, A-Rod's 621 or Sammy Sosa's 609.

And for that reason, Killebrew's legacy suffers a bit, nearly as much as Bonds' or A-Rod's or whomever else. We can no longer compare his achievements to that of the current era: it's apples to oranges.

And when we segregate the game's eras like that, we are doing a disservice to the players who "did it the right way."

I hate that we have this "pre-steroids era" and "post-steroids era." Killebrew is clearly one of the greatest home run hitters of that PRE era, but his numbers don't compare to the POST era.

Think about it:  Bonds' 73 home runs were 33% more than the 49 Killebrew hit in his greatest year.

In short, we're saying Killebrew was a great home run hitter "in his day" which is wrong--had it not been for Bonds, Sosa, Rafeal Palmerio, Manny Ramirez and the rest, we could say, without equivocation, that Killebrew was one of the best home run hitters of ANY era.

And make no mistake about it: he was.