If you can strip someone of their Olympic medals or their Tour de France win, why not a home run record?

Question

I heard not one but two announcers on TV today say that that would be totally preposterous and that there is no way we can go back in time and change things.


What do you think

Answer 1

I say YES, Take the home run record away from him. I will NEVER recognize his as the HR champ anyway. I don't care how things turn out, he is not the HR champ and never will be.

Answer 2

A championship, or a win, is not the same thing as a record, and has nothing in common with a career record.

Maybe Bonds should get double credit for any HR hit off a roidboy pitcher. That'd probably put him up to, oh, 890, maybe more.

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Back on Planet Reality (where the population is dwindling daily)...

1. Historical statistics are just that, a record of what happened. MLB has never seen fit to alter the record of history except in (rather rare, but) provable cases of clerical error or oversight. Agendas calling for revising factual history tend to be of dubious merit, tending toward the deceitful and evil. And no one needs more of that rot.

2. The notion of "double credit for HRs off steroid pitchers" is not to be taken seriously, rather to make a point in absurdium. Where to stop? Bonds used steroids (I haven't doubted this for years), but so were (perhaps are) many other players, and among the few caught there have been at least as many pitchers as hitters. Identifying specific events as being "juice delivered" is intractable; it cannot be done, there simply is no point trying. If some people want to slosh around some black paint upon the era, they are forced to use a very, very large brush -- they cannot simply delete Bonds. It really is an all-or-nothing scenario.

Answer 3

They have stripped Olympic sprinters of not only medals, but also of world records. I believe that Ben Johnson lost his world record in the 100m for blood doping. Same thing happened to Tim Montgomery. But these were singular athletic feats that you could definitively say "He was taking ------- when he did this." It's a little harder to say how many home runs Bonds hit while under the influence of steroids.

Answer 4

They are right. For a couple of reasons. There is no rule that allows banning them for the alleged offenses at the time. And there was no rule in effect banning the substances when most of the players who used them were using them. If a player tests positive now, chances are he will not be allowed to play long enough to break records. You cant unlevel the playing field in the past. You can only control the future.

Answer 5

i agree with stripping Bonds of titles, however the larger impact of doing that would be on the games that the San Fran Giants played that Bonds score allowed the Giants to win. So not only would you be stripping Bonds of his records you would have to go back in the record books and look at and or change what games the Giants may or may not have lost.

Answer 6

i agree man, but even if they remove that record or add an asterix, the damage has been done, it will ALWAYS be tainted, it doesnt matter if the history books are BONDS free, ppl will still remember how that one summer, an impossible record was broken by a cheater, to me it will always be a blackday for baseball no matter what.....

Answer 7

The commissioner has the power to do many things of which it is all pending on the outcome of the Bonds trial.

Answer 8

The commissioner and his league of experts an erase a homerun record, and in another way their whol existance.

Answer 9

Completley agree.

Answer 10

I think they should take it away from Bonds. You make a good point.