Consider the following from Newsday’s uncommonly rational Ken Davidoff,
He saw how McGwire and his freakish muscles mesmerized us with his displays of brute power. How Bonds’ Hall of Fame skills became less interesting to the masses, as McGwire created a national frenzy with his pursuit of Roger Maris’ single-season home run record.
It was a slam-dunk, it seems, to begin using what Bonds called “the –.” And just like that, he turned into a much, much better player, at age 35. Hey, I’d rather Bonds hold the single-season homer mark than McGwire. At least Bonds put together a Hall of Fame resumé before he turned to the dark side.
I dunno, Mark McGwire won a World Series and Barry has not. And McGwire was not exactly a chump at the plate before he went on his ‘roid rampage.
true ’nuff, but other than hitting 49 in his rookie, the pre-andro Big Mac hadn’t launched an assault on the record books. Is McGwire a Hall Of Famer if we erase his totals from say, ’96-2000? Maybe. But Bonds’s c.v. prior to ’98 wasn’t just Hall worthy, he’d accomplished so much in so many facets of the game that you could’ve called him one of greatest players of all time, perhaps a top 5 candidate if he performed at a high level (though not necessarily a superhuman level) past the age of 35.