“Bud Selig should use his power as commissioner to make œ755 baseball™s official number again when it comes to all-time home runs,” insists the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Terrence Moore (link lifted from Repoz and Baseball Think Factory). Curiously, Henry Aaron isn’t nearly as hysterical.
œIn all fairness to everybody, I just don™t see how you really can do a thing like that and just say somebody isn™t the record holder anymore, and let™s go back to the way that it was, Aaron said Friday, referring to the controversy involving the legitimacy of sluggers Barry Bonds, Mark McGwire, Alex Rodriguez and their artificially enhanced peers.
œIf you did that, you™d have to go back and change all kinds of records, and the [home run] record was very important to me, Aaron said. œIt™s probably the most hallowed record out there, as far as I™m concerned, but it™s now in the hands of somebody else. It belongs to Barry. No matter how we look at it, it™s his record, and I held it for a long time. But my take on all of this has always been the same. I™m not going to say that Barry™s got it because of this or because of that, because I don™t know.
Actually, courtesy of what we already know (Bonds doesn™t deny using performance-enhancing drugs but says he didn™t knowingly use them), Selig should restore Aaron™s record right now and be done with it.
œReally, it™s sort of a tricky call when you start going down that road of who is legitimate, Aaron said. œI don™t know if Barry would have hit as many home runs or hit them as far ” if that™s the case that he did use steroids ” but I still don™t think it has anything to do with him having the kind of baseball career that he had.
œHe could have had an excellent career, regardless of what he did. So it would be something that I don™t think the commissioner would like to get involved in, really. There are things out there besides worrying about a home run record that somebody now holds. Barry has the record, and I don™t think anybody can change that.