Bonds is really gonna do it.

Barry Bonds will more than likely break Hank Aaron’s all time home run record in the next month. I’ve been living in denial for well over a year, thinking that something would happen to prevent it. Career ending injury. Bud Selig suspending him for being a pompous jerk. An earthquake in San Francisco effectively ending the baseball season FOLLOWED by Bonds’ career ending injury. None of it happened, so I’ve come to terms with it.

It’s not that I hate Bonds. I don’t. I saw him play in the early 90’s and he was awesome. Granted, he never played that well against Atlanta in the post season, but he was always dangerous. I’m divided on the whole steroid issue, and I think he was a great player regardless. It’s that he’s going to be breaking the last great record of Aaron, the greatest baseball player ever. Truth be told, I have seen more feel good stories on Aaron this past year than I ever have. So it’s not like people have forgotten who he was. A new generation of players will realize that he is third all time on the career RBI list and that he had several gold gloves. Plus, we all know there will be more of a frenzy when Alex Rodriguez breaks the record in about 10 years.

But.

Aaron deserved to keep this record for now. He was hitting home runs before guys like Bret Boone and Brady Anderson could hit 50 in a season. And he did it with class, biting his lip and looking over his shoulder the whole time. This is a man who couldn’t be rude if he tried, even though he had every right to be aloof.

If there is one good thing in all of this, it’s that people have come to respect Aaron more as the complete player he was. However, you’ll need to forgive me if I don’t stand up and cheer when Bonds hits 756.

Tom Glavine

Earlier this month, Tom Glavine won his 14th postseason game before the Mets bowed to the Cardinals in the NLCS. If I was a hitter in the majors, it would drive me absolutely nuts to watch him pitch day after day. He doesn’t throw high cheese, he doesn’t have one of those roundhouse curve balls. What he has is smarts.

Janurary 1991, Atlanta, GA. My college roommate was working as an intern for the Atlanta Braves. He invited me and my fiancé to a dinner honoring Legendary Brave Dale Murphy. Dale is my 2nd favorite Brave ever (The Hammer, to answer your question). Before the dinner started, my buddy pointed out a guy and said, “That’s Tom Glavine, they say he’ll be a pretty good pitcher for the Braves one day.” I distinctly remember looking at him; he wasn’t much bigger than I was. Most of these other players seemed huge (Murphy for one, who posed for a picture with me). After surveying Glavine, I thought to myself, “Man, I could take him……….”

Fifteen years later, many a batter has watched Glavine on the mound and thought the same thing. And most of them were as wrong as I was.