What does the number 756 mean?

To baseball fans, the number one below it represents one of the sport's most glorious records that was seemingly untouchable for so many years.

It's a magic number, like 2,632, 511 or 73. If you mention it, and the context of the conversation is baseball, it's understood as to who and what you are referring to.

755 was the final tally of homeruns for a certain Hank Aaron, but it is number 715 - the homerun that one-upped Babe Ruth's longstanding record - that is truly the indelible memory for most fans.

Any baseball enthusiast has seen it at one point - either on April 8th, 1974 or at least on a video replay. The fourth inning, Al Downing pitching for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Tom House catching the homerun in the Braves bullpen, two fans joining Hank in his parade around the bases and Mrs. Aaron rushing into the arms of her son at home plate.

The whole baseball world was pulling for him - well, almost everyone.

And now, 32 years later, the chase is back on. Barry Bonds sits 47 homeruns short of Aaron's 755, and although the craze is in its early stages, it's still ubiquitous.

If Bonds comes up in conversation, it's record talk.

Can he do it? Will his legs hold up long enough? Can he play a full season? Will he retire?

Nobody cares about the prospects of the San Francisco Giants winning the World Series. It's all Bonds and it's all 756.

Although he feigns disdain for the media, or any other sort of spotlight, deep down I have a feeling he likes the attention. It seems odd for him to talk about quitting at this point and furthermore, it is questionable whether he would even have the chutzpah to do so while short of the record and while being paid roughly $22 million. His godfather, Willie Mays, doesn't believe the retirement talk and neither do I.

He'll get the record, but the more pressing question is what does it mean?

Although statistically speaking, Bonds' number 756 will, quite obviously, be more significant than Aaron's 755, but to me, number 756 will be an empty number.

It feels like Mark McGwire's 62 feels now. It's not irrelevant because a bigger, stronger, better baseball player superseded that number a few years later. It is irrelevant because Mark McGwire did steroids.

And so did Barry Bonds.
Be it tangible testimony for "unknowingly" using steroids such as "the cream" or "the clear", or just the fact that he accumulated so much muscle mass throughout his career and seemingly pumped out more power as he continued to age, the evidence seems pretty clear to me.

And if you don't believe he used steroids, even though his personal trainer (one of the few people he trusts with his workout regimen), was indicted for distributing illegal steroids, then you probably believed Rafael Palmeiro's emphatic denial as well.

Who knows whether steroids directly improved his ability to connect bat to ball, whether they merely allowed him to recover more quickly from injuries or kept his body from breaking down to this point?

The facts are that he used them and that they helped him in one way or another.

And while one-time track-and-field stars like Tim Montgomery and Marion Jones have lost their luster - and career accomplishments - because of their use of similar steroids, baseball fans just can't wait to carry Bonds on their shoulders once he hits 756.

The pitcher who gives it up will be the answer to a famous trivia question, there will be a fight for the ball wherever it lands, his teammates will rush to home plate as he circles the bases and the day, time and ballpark will forever be remembered.

But the fact that Barry Bonds used steroids to achieve this record will somehow end up as an extraneous detail in all of this.

Not in my mind.

Barry Bonds' use of steroids and homerun 756 mix like Mondays and me.

"Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together." - Vincent Van Gogh