BONDS’ HOME RUN PERFORMANCE--

Babe Ruth’s career record of 715 seasonal home runs in major league baseball was established in 1935. It stood until eclipsed by the awesome performance of Hank Aaron who wound up with a total of 755 in 1976.

Yes, both Ruth and Aaron are in baseball’s Hall of Fame—as they should be─and, records are made to be broken.

But.

Now comes this guy Barry Bonds who is about to shatter Mr. Aaron’s record. However, Bonds’ effort carries the pungent stench of allegedly being done with performance enhancing drugs: steroids.

That is no less an offense against the history of baseball that Pete Rose’s gambling which has carried the penalty, for him, of exclusion from the hall of fame.

Until the cloud of Bonds’ performance being tainted is removed, his record(s) should be a mere footnote in baseball history.

If it is true use of these drugs has infected many of today’s crop of record setting athletes, then baseball’s currently untarnished records should be frozen and all future, artificially enhanced performances should be disregarded.

And, their perpetrators should likewise be barred from the hall of fame so it continues to be a place occupied only by athletes with a lifetime of honorable, human achievement on and off the playing field.