Published: June 27, 2007 10:04 pm         

B-Sides: It might be. It could be. But do we care?

In big-league baseball, the concept of enhanced performance should be limited to those between-inning TV commercials.

And fans of the national pastime should not have to pretend to be interested in Barry Bonds’ pursuit of its most hallowed title — “home run king.” Bonds’ transformation from great player to superhuman athlete — at middle-age, no less — has left many baseball followers unable to dismiss the unending suspicion of steroid use. Never mind his surly disposition. Fans just want to know the guy swinging the bat is for real.

Thus, once Bonds becomes baseball’s new Sultan of Swat, maybe he should share that mantle with a chemist.

In 1990, I covered the National League Championship Series at Cincinnati, where the host Reds faced the Pittsburgh Pirates. I snapped a few batting-practice photos of Bonds, then the star of the Pirates and the NL Most Valuable Player. Bonds looks lithe and lean. It’s hard to believe he’s the same man who now, with mountainous shoulders at 42 years old, is about to surpass Hank Aaron’s record of 755 career home runs.

By contrast, the most interesting and believable home run chase under way belongs to Ken Griffey Jr. By the end of this summer, Junior, as he is fondly known, will likely join the 600-homer club. Unless, of course, he gets injured again, or his pleurisy flares up, or he suffers another bout of diverticulitis. Griffey’s 37 years old, after all, and he looks it, thank goodness.

When he was a teenage rookie and then a twenty-something Hall-of-Famer-to-be with the Seattle Mariners, Junior’s build mirrored that of Bonds in those 1990 batting-cage pictures. Like Bonds, Griffey has packed on a few pounds since breaking into the majors (“The Kid” debuted in 1989). But Junior’s extra girth has settled around his waist, not his neck. That’s natural.

(Funny, the best baseball movie ever is called “The Natural.”)

Vintage news clips of Aaron’s trot around the bases — while chased by those two flag-toting fans — after his 715th homer broke Babe Ruth’s record, show him carrying a slight paunch. It’s far more amazing (and interesting) to see a 40-year-old with a tire around his gut crack a big-league homer than watching WWE-sized creations launch fly balls over the left-field bleachers.

In the days surrounding Bonds’ inevitable record-breaker, lots of pundits and columnists will swim upstream, lecturing fans that Bonds’ feats are no less worthy than past greats whose skeletons left the closet long after they’d been canonized in Cooperstown. (True.) That Bonds was Hall of Fame-bound and one of the four greatest ever, with or without steroids. (True.) That baseball’s lame administration indirectly condoned steroids by ignoring signals as obvious as a third-base coach holding up a sign reading “bunt.” (True.) And that Bonds’ 756th deserves just as much respect as fellow bulging steroid suspects Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa received during their ballyhooed 1998 assault on 205-pound Roger Maris’ single-season mark of 61 dingers. (True.)

But none of that means we have to care.

Looking back on the past questionable decade, the most impressive long-ball efforts weren’t Bonds’ 73 homers in 2001, or McGwire’s 70 in ’98, or Sosa’s 66 in ’98. Instead, those came in 1997 and ’98 when Griffey, who’s name has never been linked to the scandal, twice hit 56 baseballs over the fence, aided only by his flawless left-handed swing.

Griffey will probably never top Bonds on the all-time home run list, though he’s currently enjoying his best (and healthiest) season in years with the hapless Reds. Going into Wednesday’s games, Bonds needed just six to tie Aaron. Griffey, five years younger than Bonds, trailed Hammerin’ Hank by 171 homers. On Sunday, Griffey passed McGwire for the No. 7 spot with his 583rd and 584th shots. Soon, he’ll move ahead of Frank Robinson at 586. That leaves Sosa (still at it with 601), Willie Mays (660), Ruth (714), Bonds and Aaron. Griffey, who was just 29 when Major League Baseball placed him on its 100 Greatest Players list at the turn of the century, fits among them.

Make no mistake, reminiscences of bygone eras when the Aaron-Mays-Ruth triumvirate ruled typically picture baseball idyllically. Anyone who’s played it, though, realizes the game is intensely competitive and rules get bent and broken in the process. Brotherly love and sportsmanship never protected batters when Don Drysdale threw at their heads. Remember the nail file in Joe Niekro’s pocket? Gaylord Perry’s spitballs? Corked bats used by Sosa, Chris Sabo, Graig Nettles and Albert Belle?

But, to quote America’s moms, none of those wrongs make cheating with steroids right.

Griffey refrains from being drawn into the debate, but did give the Cincinnati Enquirer a perfectly sensible outlook on that substance.

“There are good and bad things that come of it,” he told Enquirer columnist Paul Daugherty. “The good is, there are [steroids] that can help you rebound from things like asthma and emphysema. But they shouldn’t be used to gain an unfair advantage over somebody on the field.”

Apparently, fans like what they see in Junior, even though his postseason success is limited to an American League Divisional Series triumph by the Mariners over the New York Yankees in 1995. Even though his heralded return to his hometown of Cincinnati (where he once ran around the Reds’ dugout as a kid when his dad, Ken Sr., starred in right field) didn’t produce a resurrection of the Big Red Machine. In fact, Griffey has received more All-Star votes from fans (43,050,790) in his career than any player in history.

Aside from his numerous injuries since turning 30 — wow, I guess that makes him normal — the biggest knock on Griffey is that he’s sometimes wounded by criticism. But that’s OK. It shows he cares. And for a majority of Americans who love baseball, the feeling is mutual.

Mark Bennett can be reached at mark.bennett@tribstar.com or (812) 231-4377.