The Commissioner of Baseball — Bud Selig — is obviously not pleased with the turn of events despite the implementation of drug testing and the public relations hit baseball continues to take. Thursday morning, he spoke with USA Today’s esteemed journalist Christine Brennan about the steroid era.
Although Selig has taken a lot of lumps from fans and the media alike during his tenure, a different side of him was shown in Brennan’s piece — an upset, and saddened leader who may be ready to strike the hammer. This week has been ugly on the sport, and now many want to see the record book redone — thus, Selig alluded to it with Brennan.
However, a member of baseball immortality — Hank Aaron, the former holder of the all time home run record — believes things should stay as they are.
From MSNBC: ATLANTA – Hank Aaron believes Barry Bonds should keep major league baseball’s home run record.
“In 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 told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday.
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Commissioner Bud Selig has indicated that he’s given some thought to returning the record to Aaron if it is proved Bonds used steroids.
“If 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. “It’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.”
Aaron said he doesn’t think the commissioner would like to get involved.
“There are things out there besides worrying about a home run record that somebody now holds,” Aaron said. “Barry has the record, and I don’t think anybody can change that.”
If there’s some solace for those who believe the tainted players should have no business holding Aaron’s hollowed record — most in the court of public opinion still believe Hank Aaron is STILL the man. It seems that no matter what arguments that Barry throws out, or if Alex Rodriguez stays clean from here on out, number 44 for the Braves still rightfully owns baseball’s most immortal record — not anyone else.
Like I said yesterday, if you try to modify records, or retroactively expunge them for misdeeds — how far does one go? No matter if you try to change the history book — what happened has already been written and it cannot be changed.
