Wednesday, October 5, 2022

Take on the sanctity of the home run record

Beisbol has always had its issues with records, which is odd as it's the one sport where statistics seem to matter the most. Comparing eras has always been impossible, so trying to rank Ruth over Mays or Aaron is a futile attempt. Ruth was a 280 pound alcoholic who happened to also be the be the greatest player of his generation. Then again he didn't play against black ball players and also didn't have to deal with the shift, specialty pitchers, 98 mile per hour heaters from nearly the entire staff. Then again the ballparks were bigger and most. Players couldn't possibly live off just their MLB salary, so they barnstormed or worked a farm.
But that's not just it, baseball has also raised the mound, lowered the mound, tightened the baseball and loosened it. They added a DH for one league and then like fifty years later for the other one. They give you a free batter at second if the game feels too long, they cancelled the World Series and had the all-star game end in a lame tie. They have had roids and PED's and they have expanded to the point of no return. They went from 154 games to 162, they went from playoffs to wilflcarsa to play-ins to byes. They went from only Dave Kingman striking out 200 times to everybody doing it

So maybe Judge did it cleanly while Bonds and Big Mac and Sosa juiced but come on. Time to recognize one record and move on.

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