Tuesday, July 16, 2013
Jason Kipnis, voice of reason
In talking about Davis and the HR record:
“Definitely the old-school guys are gonna say 61,” Indians second baseman Jason Kipnis said. “But I almost might have to join them on 73, because when you start talking to players around the game, guys who played before you, I don’t think [Bonds] was the only one doing [PEDs]. I don’t think the pitchers were guilt-free, either, from what I hear. He was a product of his era. That’s what was going around the game at the time.
“You can put an asterisk there. You can do whatever you want. Fact is, the guy hit 73 home runs. Steroids were not hitting the baseball for him. It was impressive to watch, and you can’t take it away from him. The guy did it.”
***?
So, I would say that if we want an official record, then MLB has to decide how it want to handle the record officially. The Olympics for example not only removed Ben Johnson's then-record breaking performance from the record-leader books, it also removed his performance from existence. There's no half-measures there: either it's recognized as a valid performance, or it's not.
They do however have one little thing: wind-aided performances. In those cases, if the wind (or altitude I guess... sorry Coors) is such as to confer too great an advantage, they still recognize the performance (since all the participants were part of the environment), but not for the leaderboards. These things however are established at the time the event occurs.
MLB therefore could follow that path. They could simply say that they recognize the performances in say 199x-200y (x=whatever, and y=year before testing) for the players and teams, but won't recognize them for the leaderboards. And this is not only HR, but ERA, K, wins, batting average, steals, etc. The whole thing.
Goodbye Pedro, Goodbye Mariano, Goodbye Yanks World Series Titles. Goonight Moon.
Since MLB has not taken any such actions, and there's no fan movement otherwise, the media should be responsible enough not to create the news by writing articles they get paid for and having other media members comment on them by writing their own articles that they get paid for. It should rest in the caverns of blogs and tweets, and not as some topical news item.
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