Barry Bonds Offered Up A Reasonable Take on A-Rod's Impending Home Run Milestones

Let’s be conservative and surmise that by Memorial Day, Alex Rodriguez will have hit his seventh home run of the 2015 season, which would be the 661st of his career and move him past Willie Mays on the all-time home run list. On any other planet or in some different Earth reality we’d celebrate the achievement. Instead it figures to be an awful day, mostly because when it comes to baseball and PEDs there’s really no new ground to cover, so instead there will be lots of screaming opinions about it as it pertains to A-Rod.

A lot of the opinions will likely be nostalgia driven, since many people who spin the narratives in baseball grew up in those supposedly halcyon days of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s when food tasted better, the sky was bluer and the baseball was pure, innocent and simple.

The fact remains A-Rod is going to pass Mays sooner rather than later. Although he tried his hardest, former commissioner Bud Selig was unable to draw a giant black marker line through all of Rodriguez’s accomplishments or add an asterisk. The Yankees probably won’t celebrate the achievement and grit their teeth about paying A-Rod a $6 million bonus.

One person who doesn’t care about A-Rod’s PED past and wishes baseball would celebrate the milestone is … Barry Bonds, who worked with A-Rod over the winter. The all-time home run champion gave a long interview with USA Today’s Bob Nightengale, which touched upon the record and many other topics. Given that Mays is Bonds’ godfather he certainly has more of a connection to all of this than, say, a sportswriter who grew up sneaking into the Polo Grounds. Oh right, Bonds certainly knows the stigma attached to alleged PED use.

"“My godfather means the world to me. I love him to a T,” Bonds told USA TODAY Sports in an hour-long telephone interview, “but when Alex hits No. 660, I’ll be happy for him. Willie will be happy for him. Everybody should be happy for him. “Any time anybody in the game does something that’s a great accomplishment, the game of baseball should celebrate that. “No matter what. Baseball is benefiting from that person’s hard work, so baseball should at least celebrate.”"

That’s a nice thought, Barry, but it’s not going to happen. If it happens at Yankee Stadium the home fans will cheer, but it’s not like the YES Network will immediately air a 90-minute special “Yankeeography” to honor the achievement were it accomplished by another player. Unlike other Yankees milestones there hasn’t been constant sales pitches by Steiner Sports so fans at home purchase a part of A-Rod’s historic moment. If it happen on the road? All bets are off.

Barry, you should avert your eyes and ears from any sort of sports discourse when A-Rod passes Mays, because a rational, reasoned opinions like this will be few and far between:

"“This guy is not running for president of the United States,” Bonds said. “He’s not running for commissioner. We’re not running for political office. We’re just ballplayers. “We’re not God. We’re imperfect people. We’re human beings.”"

Yep Barry, it is just sports. It’s just a number. It’s really nothing to get all that upset about or lose sleep over.

But people will. Sigh.