I got into a good discussion on Monday about baseball history and specifically Chris Davis’ rampant home run-hitting pace this season with the guys from The Coach’s Buzz on CBS Sports Radio 1300. If you aren’t aware, I do a weekly segment each Monday with them at 7:15 p.m. to talk about the Orioles. Coach Buzz Bataglia asked me a very simple question, but it caught me off guard. If Chris Davis is able to break Roger Maris’ single-season American League record of 61 home runs, what would it mean in a grand scheme of baseball history?
You can listen to the segment here: http://cbsbaltimore.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/coachs-buzz-130708-segment-5.mp3
Obviously accomplishing such a feat would be significant. The record stood as the Major League’s single-season home run mark for 37 years until Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa came along in 1998. McGwire hit 70 round-trippers that magical summer while Sosa was right behind him at 66. That 1998 season was one that everyone thought would go down as one of the most incredible in baseball history. No one could’ve expected that in 1999, McGwire would hit 65 and Sosa would come back and hit 63. Then in 2001, Sosa put 64 homers up on the board, only to be one-upped by one Barry Lamar Bonds, who broke McGwire’s record by hitting 73 out of the yard.
Then the bubble burst. The steroid cloud started storming on everyone and the jig was up. All of those numbers entered a very dark, murky place where no one wanted to talk about them. It’s been over 10 years since all of that now. We’ve heard all about trying to move on from the so-called “steroid era” for some time now, but will we ever really move on? There are still a number of known steroid users in the game today. Look at what Bartolo Colon is doing out in Oakland. He’s putting up Cy Young Award numbers, but will have no chance to win the honor because of his checkered past. The same goes for guys like Melky Cabrera, Alex Rodriguez and even Manny Ramirez, who is making a comeback attempt with the Texas Rangers.
But when we ARE able to push ourselves far enough away from the cloud of performance-enhancing drugs, we can still see the beauty of today’s numbers and compare them to yesterday’s. We can also look at a guy like Chris Davis and see the number of home runs he’s hitting. I’m not one to talk about a player’s “pace” very often, but Davis is at least on a track to break Brady Anderson’s club record of 50 home runs in a season. I’m not here to tell you that Davis is going to break that mark, or Roger Maris’ record from 1961. He could fall off and finish shy of the mark, but let’s talk hypothetical here for a minute.
If he WERE to do so, what kind of statement would that make? Would he, in your eyes, own the best single-season home run mark because he did so “cleanly?” In this day and age, with interleague play, does owning the “American League” record in any statistical category even matter as much as it did in Maris’ playing days? Would Davis still need to hit 74 home runs in order to break any kind of single-season home run record?
That’s the beauty of baseball. We can debate these things. We can all have our own opinion and reasons for what we believe. From my standpoint, I’ve always thought players with certain credentials should be in the Hall of Fame. I view Barry Bonds as the single-season home run record holder. He’s also obviously the all-time career home run king. I sat on my grandfather’s couch late on the night of August 7th, 2007 with him and my father and watched Bonds take Mike Bacsik of the Washington Nationals deep for his 756th home run to break Hank Aaron’s all-time mark. Even at that time, the PED rumors were running wild, but in that moment it didn’t matter. The magical feeling and goosebumps on my arms are something I’ll never forget. Being able to spend that moment with two men that taught me about the game from the time I was a young boy is also something I’ll cherish for the rest of my life.
Recognizing that moment in baseball history and its significance to me doesn’t make me a steroid supporter. It makes me a baseball fan. When I took my one and only trip to Cooperstown to visit the Hall of Fame in 2003, I recognized that the men on bronze plaques played in different eras when the game looked and felt different. The guys that are inducted 30 years from now will have an even different feel. The common bond between all of these men is that the bases were 90 feet apart and the mound was 60 feet, six inches from home plate. The game of baseball has common denominators that allow us to make comparisons. The key is educating the generations that follow exactly what our parents have taught us. The “steroid era” is not the only cloud that has ever come about over baseball. Pete Rose comes to mind. The 1919 Black Sox are also a good lesson to learn from.
As I said, no one is proclaiming Davis as any type of a record holder just yet. He still has a long way to go to even finish the season as THIS year’s home run leader. It’s hard not to recognize though what kind of special season he has put together to this point.
I’m also not here to tell you that Davis is definitely doing all of this cleanly. I know there are those out there who suspect that there’s some sort of enhancement going on. Those people have every right to suspect it after what we’ve seen over the years.
If Davis is doing things the right way, as Orioles fans it’s time to take a step back and realize that we are seeing something quite special. It’s something that could be record-breaking. Then again, to some, maybe it’s not.
