Babe still the Best

Babe Ruth hit 54 home runs in 1920. Before Ruth the most homers hit in a single 154-game season was 24 by Philadelphia's Gavvy Cravath. The Babe hit 59 in 1921 and 60 in '27. If you claim to be a baseball purist, Barry Bonds single-season record of 73 is a joke.

For the first 15 years of Bonds' career, he averaged - averaged - 33 homeruns. Then all of the sudden he hits 40 more than his average and no one wonders if something is going on? Mark McGuire's 70 in 1998 also doesn't hold water in my book. Steroids or not, Bonds and McGuire obviously used supplements Ruth never had in the '20s and '30s. Imagine a beefed up, muscle-bound Ruth...he would have hit well over 714 career bombs. He may have been in the thousands by the time it was all said and done.

If you ask me, Roger Maris's 61 homers in 1961 also cannot be counted as a legit number because he played 8 more games than Ruth did in '27. Had Ruth played 162 games, he may have hit 64, we'll never know. But here's the point: Babe Ruth's 60 homerun season in 1927 is still the all-time record in Major League Baseball history for a single-season. Maris had eight more games, McGuire and Bonds had supplemental advantages, and nearly 80 seasons later, Ruth is still the best the ever was...period.

So when Barry Bonds surpasses Ruth in the career home run category, don't cheer or give him an ovation because it doesn't count. Bonds is a cheater. McGuire's name should be scratched out of record books. And what does it say about the baseball fans out there that Sammy Sosa and McGuire's chase for 61 brought the fans back. Sure that was a fun time, but it's not the same. Babe Ruth originally stormed the majors into the national spotlight, and it's Ruth who will keep it there. It's up to the few baseball purists left to make sure the names Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron don't get forgotten. They were the real sluggers, not these beefed up, greedy cheaters who think cheating is the way to be remembered. Oh, we'll remember McGuire, Bonds and Sosa but for all the wrong reasons.

Hank Aaron's career home run mark will never be touched. And if Bonds passes him, it will be the dirty hands of a steroid abuser who erases Aaron's name...and that makes me sick. Why couldn't they have done it like real men? Like Ruth and Hank did? The home runs brought the fans back for a while, but in the end all it did was alienate the fans from the players even more. We've been betrayed for what? So that a bunch of no-good cheaters could pass the greatest players in history in the record books. I'll never acknowledge any of Bonds's home run records. Ruth is still the man after all these years.