Wrighster or Wrong - Homerun King

After Aaron Judge broke the AL Home Run Record, George Wrighster explains what it means to be a "home run king," and argues for Major League Baseball to do right by Barry Bonds and accept the realities of the Steroid Era. #fsrweekends

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
You're ready to check your feelings at the door. This
is am I Rice there? Or am I wrong? We're
bringing new facts and only the truth. Now, am I
Rice there or am I wrong? We need to talk
about what it means to be the real home run king.
And before you think I'm getting ready to sit up

(00:22):
here and diminish Barry Bonds, Roger Marri's or Aaron Judge,
just take a seat and just listen up. There is
no way to diminish those guys. I'm here to diminish
the idea of diminishing those guys. Now, when we call
somebody a king, why do we completely ignore the way
monarchies actually work. Because when somebody is a monarch, there

(00:44):
the monarch of their era. Queen Elizabeth the Second was
the Queen of England and the longest tenured UH British
monarch of all time, and King Charles took over the crown.
But that doesn't mean that she didn't have her rein
and nobody he is sitting there wasting any injergy talking
about there's an asterisk next to it because she's a

(01:05):
constitutional monarch instead of an absolute monarch. She's just the
product of her era. But she still wore the crown
and the details of her rule is actually what makes
her rule interesting, and that brings me back to baseball.
Part of the beauty of baseball is recognition to variances
between the different eras. There's the dead ball era, the

(01:28):
live ball era, the integration era, the expansion era, the
free agency era, and the steroid era. Are all footnotes
and context that provide for the players that earned those
crowns in that area. Babe Ruth hit sixty home runs
in a season. The context is that it happened in
a fifty four game season, and he did it without

(01:51):
having to face one single black picture. There are no asterisks,
those are just the details. Roger Marris hit sixty one
home runs in his hundred and sixty first game of
the season in nineteen six one, and that was the
first season that the a L actually played a hundred
and sixty two games, and through a hundred and fifty

(02:11):
four games, Marri's had fifty eight home runs. And not
even to mention, Mickey Mannow's entire body fell apart in
September of that season and he had fifty four home
runs himself, leaving Roger Maris to chase the record alone.
There are no asteris, There are just the details, and
Aaron Judge hit his sixty two home runs this week

(02:32):
to pass Roger Merris for all time in the a
L for that crown, and two of the home runs
he hit this season would only be considered home runs
in one park in the entire Major Leagues, and advantage
provided by playing in Yankee Stadium with his short right field.
There are no asterix, There are just the details and

(02:53):
Barry Bonds he carried three m v p s and
three on base percentage titles into before he even gotten
to the steroid era. He passed Ruth and Roger Marris
to become the single season home run king in the
hundred and thirty five game of the two thousand and
one season. He did it all while leading the Major
leagues and walks. He did it against pictures that had

(03:15):
access to every single chemical resource that every single player
in that era did. And he did it in a
season where Phil Nevin, Luis Gonzalez, Sean Green, Todd Helton,
and Jim Tommy all interestingly posted their best ever home
run seasons and pictures were out there doing the same
exact thing. Now for Barry Bonds. There should be no asterix.

(03:37):
There should just be actual and factual context surrounding bonds
place at the home as the home run king not
only of his era, but of the NL and of
Major League Baseball. The only thing left to legitimize not
only Barry Bonds, but the era in which Barry Bonds
played is his inclusion into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

(04:02):
And that is during an era that the home run
chases actually saved baseball from the disinterest that was brought
on by a work stoppage, but also the the path
forward to figure out how that they should adjudicate things
because they had no performance enhancing of drugs policy in place.

(04:23):
Baseball benefited from it, and then it tried to turn
its game. It's back on its most valuable players who
helped save the game. Now, that's the same Hall of
Fame that didn't put Barry Bonds in included Bud Selick
in seventeen despite him being in charge of baseball during

(04:44):
the steroid era and during that work stoppage that many
people think that necessitated the entire steroid era. The same
Hall of Fame that has no problem carrying names of
notorious assholes and attempted murderer Ty Cobb. The same Hall
of Fame that carries the legacies of gay Lord Perry

(05:06):
and his three hundred vassiline aided wins and thirty five
hundred spitting hands strikeouts, and guys like cap Anson, notorious
racists who kept the game from being integrated. I'm not
advocating that anybody get kicked out of the Hall of Fame,
because it is for what you do on the field
in that era. And I'm simply asking baseball to recognize

(05:30):
its royalty with respect to the details and the context
of their eras. And they've done it in every single era,
but the one Barry Bonds reigned over. Now, Baseball's greatest
shame isn't the base isn't the steroid era. Baseball's greatest
shame has always been the exclusion of its monarchs, starting

(05:50):
with the monarchs out of Kansas City, of the Negro Leagues,
and now the refusal to recognize the true home run King,
Barry Bonds. Let that sink in