That's what we called Barry back in his Bucco days, Mr. May. He earned that nickname. No player in the early 90's started a season more capable of making you think that a World Series was in the mail, and no player left you feeling more disappointed in September watching him tighten up so badly that you couldn't shove a pin up his butt with a jackhammer. So when the second biggest head case since his father (but that's another story) took the money and ran (if he felt like it) to San Francisco, Pirate fans had intensely mixed emotions about his departure. Fittingly, a decade or so later, baseball fans have intensely mixed emotions about his refusal to depart without a key personal accolade. There is symapthy and empathy for Giant fans though, just like Barry didn't bring Pirate fans a World Series Trophy he didn't bring one to the Bay City either, although he got much better in the postseason even carrying the Giants to a World Series loss in 2002. As a matter of fact, Barry got much better in the regular season too. Oddly enough, Barry did what no other athlete before him had done, he didn't just get much better in September, he got better in the September of his career. When you look at Barry's six full seasons in Pittsburgh, he's a 27 home run/yr. hitter, which is damn good by the way. When you look at Barry's 12 full seasons in SF though, he's a 44 home run/yr. hitter. Without drilling down into more detail, the most awesome achievements in Barry's career, the bulk of his home runs, the brutal slugging percentage, the .299 career average all resulted form Barry's getting better when most guys start to decline. And to what do we owe the tremendous, post-30 increase in muscle mass, the lofty stats and the solipsistic trot into the record books? Training, clean living, viatmins and flaxseed oil. Heck, even Jesse Jacskon says Barry's you-reen tests come back negative. I guess nothing makes an outrageous lie more fun than a broken-dwon mouthpiece so willing to butcher the english language on his behalf. It's a sad joke Barry played on major league baseball. But he wasn't the first, he was simply the best. Ironic that since he couldn't be the best player, he chose to be the best cheater. But it was always about Barry anyway, or he'd have a few World Series trophies by now. So Barry's you-reen comes back clean though, and we're all supposed to by into the fact that he grew into Superman naturally? Any statistics teacher though, will tell you that the way to foil a study is to deliver an answer the test isn't looking for. So Barry passed his tests, big deal. There are about a billion computer viruses out there, made merely for the entertainment of techno-jerks, flying under the radar of every antivirus program sold. But we're supposed to think Barry doesn't have a few Doctors smart enough to find the synthetic hormone for which MLB hasn't yet found the assay. Am I the only one who secretly wishes that Barry gets his left arm crushed by a plunging helicopter because a freak wind pulls the bird down into the Stick and he can't get out of the batter's box in time? I mean, I wouldn't want to kill him, or anyone for that matter. But Bonds breaking Babe Ruth's record, much less Hank Aaron's, is absolute sports sacrilege. I won't even touch on the Hank Aaron record for right now, because the damage that flaxseed oil creates has already made it very hard for broken-down Barry to heal or recover, so 755 appears safely out of reach. But I will delight in the conundrum it creates for racist bigots like Jackson who practice the very bias they claim to despise. Again, that's another story. Barry passing the Bambino is tragedy. It's everything wrong with baseball, sports and humankind all liquified and sucked up into one neat little hypodermic. I knew there was a reason the game ceased being fun for me anymore, I knew there was a reason the NFL has become the national past time and the best marketing machine on earth, I knew it, I just didn't know why. Now I know why. Of the big 4, assuming that Hockey is still a sport (I heard they're back from strike now), baseball is the game that gives the most and asks the least. Roger Clemens is what, 93 years old now, and he can command $14mm to pitch a half of a season. Bernie Williams will go from making twelve million dollars a season to collecting social security benefits. And these guys play for 10, 15 or 20 seasons if they want to. I'd love to see Rocket Roger take an elbow from Shaq, or Jason Giambi absorb a mean cross-check from Scott Stevens, or best of all see Barry get blindsided by Javon Kearse. That's why a pretty good baseball player can cheat the system and pass a legend. The only punishment for baseball players is time. I keep hoping for a miracle. That the knee that will never heal gives out altogether, that body snatchers invade earth and replace Barry with an alien who has a soul or that Barry recants his old faith (in Barry), joins the Mormon Church and immediately dedictaes himself to the more noble cause of polygamy. I keep hoping, but the likelihood is that the sickness that is major league baseball will not be cured in one fell swoop, and its poster child for petulance, selfishness and dispicable choices will shepherd it right into the gutter where it belongs. That is precisely why Barry will hit 714, 715 and maybe more. He found a short-term cure for time and baseball would much rather ignore the cancer in the hopes it will go away. Babe Ruth's record is safe. They don't play that game anymore.