SoCalSportsfan is the dean of FOX Sports blogs. He's the one guy it seems everyone has read, and is well respected in the blogging community. He's also a defender, maybe THE defender of Barry Bonds. Quick to point out the hypocrisy and virulence of some of the attacks on Bonds, he usually makes a strong case for the greatness of Bonds the hitter, and a reasoned defense of Bonds the man. However, his latest brief in behalf of the Giants slugger is his least convincing one.

http://community.foxsports.com/blogs/socalsportsfan/2007/06/22/The_X_Files_Hank_Aaron

In his post, SoCal defends Bonds by suggesting Aaron may also have used performance enhancing drugs based on quotes by Tom House, a reliever who played with Aaron. House doesn't say Aaron used drugs, but admits he himself did and implicates unnamed teammates. This is a weak argument at best, like saying that because Aaron visited San Francisco with the Braves in the 60's that there is some chance he took LSD with Timothy Leary and partied with the Merry Pranksters.

SoCal takes House's admissions and ups the ante by saying, "...when you look at the rate he hit his homeruns, and at what age he hit them, they suddenly became very dubious. At age 40 in his 23rd season, Aaron had his highest HR percentage of his entire career. He also led the majors in HR percentage for three years straight as a 38, 39, and 40 year old. This is quite an accomplishment for someone who should be declining in power rather than increasing in performance as they age."

Fair enough. I suspect SoCal doesn't believe Aaron used steroids, but is setting up a trojan horse defense of Bonds. Look inside and you see that if you can make a linkage between Aaron and steroids through House and a few seasons HR totals, no matter how tenuous, then you can't accept the connection between Bonds' unusual HR stats and dubious off field associations either. In reality, a look at the stats draws a clear line between how Aaron's and Bonds' careers have progresssed.

Since grand jury testimony first links Bonds to the BALCO steroid story in the year 2000 at age 35, and SoCal makes his point based on home run totals toward the end of Aaron's career, let's compare the two players at the same ages.

Through their 34 year old season Bonds had hit home runs in 6.38% of his at bats and Aaron 5.74%. This shows that Bonds achievements pre-BALCO mark him as a legitimate home run threat and reveal what an unusual power hitter Aaron was. Hammerin' Hank had 10 years with 600 or more at bats and never walked or struck out as many as 100 times in any season. Aaron was never a pure power hitter in the mold of his contemporaries such as Killebrew, Howard, or McCovey.

Here is each player's HR percentage through age 34 and each season afterward:

Thru 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42

Aaron 5.74% 8.04% 7.36% 9.49% 7.57% 10.20% 5.88% 2.58% 3.69%

Bonds 6.38% 10.21% 15.34% 11.41% 11.54% 12.06% 11.90% 7.08% 8.52%

Aaron and Bonds HR %'s both went up through age 40, but Bonds much more so. In fact, he is much more of a power hitter now than he was through age 34, even at age 42. The bounce in Aaron's stats settles back to his thru 34 average by the time he hit 40 and dropped dramatically after that.

The aspect of Bonds' home run hitting that leaves many suspicious, and some openly hostile, is the dramatic change that exactly coincides with his association with BALCO.

Even if prosecutors didn't have documents seized from BALCO that show payments for HGH and steroids for Bonds, even if we had never heard the words "the cream" and "the clear", even if Bonds girlfriend hadn't testified about conversations with him concerning steroid use, even if one witness refused to comment on what appears to be a doping calendar set up for Bonds, even if Gary Sheffield testified that Bonds told him "not to ask questions", this stat line is highly suggestive that something radically changed Bonds performance about the year 2000.

If not performance enhancing drugs, then what?

You can believe, and I do, that Bonds is the greatest hitter since Ted Williams. You can make the case that any benefit he has received from whatever training regimen he has used is mnor compared to his natural abilities and intelligence. It's obvious that baseball's problems with performance enhancing drugs didn't start, and won't end, with Barry Bonds. But don't drag Hank Aaron into the debate over Bonds behavior.

The biggest difference between Aaron and Bonds is that 755, Hank Aaron's home run total, stands today unquestioned as the greatest career achievement in baseball history. 756, whenever Barry Bonds hits that mark, won't.