I like the Baseball Hall of Fame. It's where it should be, in a small town that has a claim (however tenuous now) to being a place where baseball started. Though no one really believes Abner Doubleday invented the game in the 1840s in Cooperstown, NY, the fact that the myth survived is in itself part of the structure of the idea of baseball - it is a game that inordinately attracts belief.
That is why I love the asterisk ball, the ball that Barry Bonds hit out of the park to beat the home run record of Hank Aaron. It is going to Cooperstown and it is going to have a asterisk, that symbol of a questionable stat, stamped on it.
The baseball from Barry Bonds’s much-debated 756th home run will soon land in the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. When it gets there, it will be branded with an asterisk. Marc Ecko, the fashion designer who bought the ball for $752,467, asked the fans to decide how he should treat the memento. After more than 10 million online votes, 47 percent of voters wanted the ball to be adorned with an asterisk, 34 percent said it should not be changed and 19 percent wanted it to be shot into space. The first two options included the addendum that the ball would be donated to the Hall of Fame.Why do I like this? It expresses the moment of the home run, the lunacy of the price of memorabilia, the scandal surrounding steroids as well as the humble fragile nature of the ball itself. It also captures the internet era and the dislocation of authority - neither Bonds or the Hall of Fame are controlling the moment.
Comments
Ben (The Tiger) - September 27, 2007 9:36 am
I voted for the asterisk, too.
It's justice -- excellence recognized, but with a caveat.
Bonds should be in the Hall of Fame once he retires, too.
Alan - September 27, 2007 9:52 am
So should Pete Rose...and Joe Jackson, too. Each with their own asterisk.
Ben (The Tiger) - September 27, 2007 10:00 am
Oh, but if you let Charlie Hustle into the HoF, you'd have to let in <i><b>everyone</b></i> who has 4200 hits...
Alan - September 27, 2007 10:14 am
If they are deserving. You will recall that we discussed the rules for getting in the Hall of Fame in November 2006. Maybe they all fail on "integrity" but it would be interesting to canvass all decisions as to who is in and how is out based on that criteria. Is the integrity of baseball itself such that it can show itself to have been a model?
Temujin - September 27, 2007 11:53 am
I'd hazard a guess that everyone in the hall of fame "cheated" in some way at one time or another throughout their career. The difference is that they either never got caught, or it wasn't blown up into a spectacle like it has been with Bonds.
How many batters have used excessive pine tar on their bat over the past seventy-five years or so?
ry - September 27, 2007 12:07 pm
Excessive pine tar? Look, a good grip doesn't let you turn jam pitches that would be pop-ups to second into hr. Steroids does. Steroids also allow you to take that jam pitch and turn it into a basehit when otherwise you're an out.
Besides, the pine tar rule was simply there because one owner was a cheapskate who didn't want to have to buy a bunch of balls. And, in case you didn't notice, George Brett was called out and fined for his pinetar usage. Do the crime pay the time.
Sure, maybe, everyone at one point in time took liberties. But not systematically over a decade---ala 'Roidhead Bonds. Stealing signs while at second and relaying them to the hitter is technically cheating. But there's no way anyone of good conscience can say that that's the same thing as taking steriods. No way.
I'll never be comfortable with Bonds being in the Hall. That's like calling Nixon the best president ever in my book.
Douglas - September 28, 2007 11:06 am
I want to live to see a baseball in lunar orbit.