Bonds may break the poetry of baseball stats

Tainted by steroid scandals, Barry Bonds's impending historic home run may not soar in the public's estimation.

By Steven Lewis

from the July 25, 2007 edition

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New Paltz, N.Y. - A year or so before "Hammerin' Hank" Aaron would hit number 715 and break Babe Ruth's record for lifetime home runs, Midwestern writer Jim Hazard wrote an unforgettable poem on the one book he'd want to have if he was marooned on a desert island.

It was not the Bible, the presumptive hands-down favorite in genteel parlor games. Nor was it the kind of larger-than-a-lifetime-to-read literary work such as Marcel Proust's "Remembrance of Things Past" or Dante's "Inferno." Nor Shakespeare's eternally insufferable "Hamlet;" nor James Joyce's even more insufferable, "Finnegan's Wake." No. In Mr. Hazard's extraordinary poem, he created an elegant, perhaps even transcendent logic for his desert-island book: "The Baseball Encyclopedia."

Thirty-odd years later I remain certain that anyone who truly loves the game of baseball would understand immediately why Hazard's selection of the Encyclopedia was the perfect choice. For the uninitiated, however, please know that the book contains no poetry or ancient wisdom, only baseball statistics. Nothing more. Just numbers. And not just numbers, per se, but the veritable lifetime statistics of every player who ever played in the major leagues.

They are all there in the good book, from guys who played in only one game such as Barney Martin (two innings pitched) and Eddie Gaedel (one at-bat – he walked) to the famously infamous Pete Rose, who, despite his betting scandal, holds the record for the most games played (3,562) and at-bats (14,053). It doesn't matter if the player's career lasted one day or the record of 27 years (Nolan Ryan, 1966-1993), all the figures are "lifetime" stats.

In a game where statistics take on near-religious life-and-death significance, everything is there in the good book for the marooned reader. And it's all about the numbers. Through the creation of the endless permutations, probabilities, and possibilities that make baseball the most holy of all games, the purest of the pure books would lend meaning and excitement to one's solitary hours unto eternity.

But now with the steroid scandals besmirching Barry Bonds's quest to overtake Aaron's 755, the most sacred of the sacred statistics are on the verge of being rendered meaningless.

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