Bonds, Babe a world apart

When Babe Ruth died at the age of 53 in 1948, his 714 home runs made him the home run king — and no one else was close. Jimmie Foxx, with 534 homers, was No. 2, and none of the stars of that time like Ted Williams and Stan Musial seemed likely to pass Ruth.

The Babe was alone at the top until a little more than two months after what would have been his 79th birthday in 1974 when Hank Aaron hit his 715th career home run. Aaron finished his career with 755 home runs.

Now the Babe was in second place — a position he has held ever since. But when Ruth’s 111th birthday is celebrated this weekend, it likely will be the last time Ruth occupies second place on Feb. 6.

Sometime in the 2006 season, Barry Bonds, who has 708 home runs, will hit No. 715 and the Babe will be third.

What is the feeling about this in the house where the Babe was born — the Babe Ruth Museum and Birthplace in Baltimore — where they will be celebrating Ruth’s birthday with a party and other festivities? Bring it on, says Mike Gibbons, executive director of the birthplace museum and the Sports Legends Museum at Camden Yards.

“Barry Bonds surpassing Babe Ruth’s career home run mark is a good thing for Babe Ruth, because it draws attention to the Babe and what he meant for baseball,” Gibbons said. “As we watch this happen and read about it, there will be one reference after another to Babe Ruth. So we are looking at it as a positive thing.”

Not everyone will be so comfortable with the notion of Bonds passing Ruth. For some, it has unfortunate implications and symbolism for a variety of messy issues that go far beyond the playing field. It could get ugly.

Then again, everything that seems to surround Barry Bonds usually turns ugly, in varying degrees.

Babe Ruth represents different things to different people. One of the tales from World War II was that Japanese pilots cursed Ruth’s name when they attacked as a rallying cry. Whether true or not, the notion was that Ruth was a symbol of America.

But for some black baseball fans, he was not a symbol of their America. For some, Ruth represented a symbol of the divide that kept black players out of major league baseball until Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in 1947 — sort of baseball’s version of a white heavyweight champion. That is a mantle that, based on all the evidence, Ruth would hardly have felt comfortable with.

Bonds certainly fueled the notion that Ruth means something different to him when he spoke out on the prospects of passing the Babe at the 2004 All-Star Game. Bonds declared it was more important for him to pass Ruth than Aaron because, “as a left-handed hitter I wiped him out. And in the baseball world Babe Ruth is everything, right? I got his slugging percentage, and I’ll take his home runs and that’s it. Don’t talk about him no more.”

At the time, Gibbons took Bonds to task for his comments.

“My problem was that I felt that Barry didn’t need to demean or bash the legends of the game, be it Babe Ruth or anybody else,” Gibbons said while preparing for this weekend’s festivities. “I felt he should be a true ambassador of the game and embrace the history. You don’t see that in other sports. You don’t see Tiger Woods going around criticizing Arnold Palmer, nor do you see a Tom Brady or a Peyton Manning bashing Johnny Unitas. I just thought it was inappropriate for Barry to come across that way. But that was the beginning and the end of it.

“Barry really does have the mantle of being today’s top slugger, or at least one of them, in baseball, and he should wear that proudly.”

Pride, though, will be a tough act to sell as Bonds passes Ruth and then perhaps goes on to pass Aaron. He won’t make it easy for anyone to feel good about this, because the mantle that Bonds does carry, and likely always will, is the symbol of the steroids era.

Rafael Palmeiro testing positive, and Mark McGwire’s refusal to answer questions at last year’s congressional hearing may be the most memorable images of the steroid era. But the one who brought it into the limelight was Bonds, even though the evidence around him is circumstantial. It is Bonds’ 73-home run season in 2001 that is sometimes blamed for getting everyone all juiced up about steroids, setting events such as the BALCO labs investigation in motion.

It led to the new testing program in baseball that will result in first-time offenders being suspended for 50 games, second-time offenders facing a 100-game suspension, and third time offenders will be banned for life.

There was some hope that maybe Bonds was taking a step in the right direction to take that mantle Gibbons spoke of when he initially said he would play for the United States in the upcoming World Baseball Classic. But that was soon tarnished when Bonds, coming off three surgeries on his right knee last year that kept him sidelined for all but the last two weeks of the 2005 season, later said he would not play.

“I don’t want to give the impression that the WBC is not important,” Bonds said on his Web site. “I know this means a lot to showcasing our sport worldwide, and the patriotism of playing for Team USA would have been a great honor. I feel what is best for me, my family, the Giants and our fans is that I sit the WBC out.”

Reasonable speculation then concluded that what was best for Bonds, his family, the Giants and their fans was for him not to be tested by the strict Olympic-style program being used to compete in the WBC.

Baseball has no plans for any kind of official ceremony if and when Bonds passes Ruth. No record will be broken. Bonds is moving up from third place to second on the all-time home run list, though it is much more than that. Gibbons would welcome Bonds to the Babe’s birthplace if and when he passes the Babe.

“We would be thrilled to have him here,” Gibbons said. “Henry Aaron was at the birthplace years ago, and that was great fun. Reggie Jackson, Frank Robinson and other great sluggers have come through here, and it was always pretty special. I would love to have Barry come though the museum and let him hold one of Ruth’s bats.”

Maybe if he held that bat, Barry Bonds would realize that, stripped of all the symbolism Babe Ruth was, like him, just a ballplayer.