The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson. I Know Baseball, but I Don’t Know How to Know about History
Editor’s Note: Jeff Pearlman is the author of 10 books including his latest “The Last Folk Hero: The Life and Myth of Bo Jackson,” which is forthcoming from Mariner Books. The opinions expressed are of his own. Please read the opinion on CNN.
I don’t know how to know about history. Because Major League Baseball has devoted much of the season to reminding us that history was about to be made. It was all over MLB.com, talked about by the MLB Network talking heads and thrown up and down by the broadcast booths. It will be a great day of history! History should be made. The history that is destined to be made will be amazing history, because, eh, it’s historic.
Barry Bonds broke Mark McGwire’s home run record with 73 home runs, we all knew it was nonsense. Not some of us – all of us. Here was a man, at age 36, with muscles growing atop muscles and a skull size that – as I reported in my Bonds biography, “Love Me Hate Me” – had actually increased in recent years (this is physically impossible without the help of HGH). It was stupid to be in San Francisco when Bonds passed McGwire. Just so damn stupid. The local fans stood and cheered, but it felt flat and meaningless and a bit embarrassing. It was like seeing a magician’s fake thumb.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/29/opinions/aaron-judge-roger-maris-major-league-baseball-pearlman/index.html
The Breakup of Sosa, Ruth and Maris In The Major League Baseball Pearlman Era: Robertson-Judge Roger Maris in 1961
And, if there’s one thing we’ve learned from former President Donald Trump, repeating a line pays dividends. The words somehow embed themselves into our psyches until – after enough exposure – we consider the thought both original and irrefutable.
The fact that Roger Maris hit 61 homers in 1961, one more than Babe Ruth, was thought to be one of the greatest achievements in sports history. Maris had 61 homers over 161 games, while Ruth had 154. The lord’s year of 1961 was also an expansion season, meaning additional teams with thinned-out pitching staffs.
Inside press boxes, we’d discuss how what unfolded before us was increasingly impossible to believe. Baltimore’s Brady Anderson, who previously had a career-high season home run total of 21, raised eyebrows when he hit 50. What occurred to make Sosa’s body more and more like champion bodybuilder Lee Haney? Why does that 35-year-old second baseman have acne coating his back?
The league and unions agreed to testing in 2002, followed by urine testing for the performance enhancers in 2004 and blood testing for the growth hormone in 2012 It’s far from perfect, but it’s an improvement. “We constantly improve that (testing) program,” Rob Manfred, the Major League commissioner, said in 2016. “The science gets better. And it is true that the windows of detection on certain substances have been lengthened – windows of detection, meaning the periods of time in which you can detect a substance in somebody’s body have been improved. Science is getting better.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/29/opinions/aaron-judge-roger-maris-major-league-baseball-pearlman/index.html
Dusty Baker Wins the World Series: The Astros Win 4-1 at Minute Maid Park on Saturday Night Against the Philadelphia Phillies
On the one hand, the 30-year-old slugger has had a season for the ages – he’s all but locked up the AL MVP award, and at this moment is in line to become the Yankees’ first triple crown winner since Mickey Mantle in 1956.
Editor’s Note: Terence Moore is an Atlanta-based national sports columnist and commentator. He’s a CNN sports contributor and a visiting professor of journalism at Miami University in Ohio. Follow him on Twitter @TMooresports and subscribe to his YouTube channel. His views are reflected in this commentary. Read more opinion on CNN.
Before the 2022 World Series, I sent a text to somebody I’ve spent 45 years as a sports journalist covering, first as Major League Baseball player, then as a coach and manager. The relationship has become a friendship over the years.
My text read: “Go Astros! I won’t be physically at the World Series, but I’ll be cheering on the other right-minded people and supporting Dusty Baker.
With your Astros winning 4-1 Saturday night at Minute Maid Park in Houston, you ended this World Series in Game 6 over the Philadelphia Phillies, and showed those facing adversity over the course of years (and years and years) that the answer is perseverance.
You proved that a team can win with the positive attitude of a leader and the sense of humor, thanks to the help of a great mound, defense and baseman Yordan Alvarez.
Actually, Alvarez’s three-run homer in the sixth inning traveled only 450 feet over the huge structure behind the center-field fence called the “batter’s eye.” That pushed the Astros from a 1-0 deficit to a 3-1 lead, en route to Baker’s first world championship in his 25th season as a Major League manager.
No manager in baseball history had won as many career regular season games (2,093) as this 73-year-old eternal optimist, but until Saturday’s win, Baker had never earned a World Series ring.
There was a person asking Baker if the whole thing had hit him as he stood on the victory stage.
“Oh, it’s hit me alright,” the oldest manager ever to win a World Series said, his face beaming with his contagious smile. As soon as a ball was hit over the moon, it hit me. That was when it hit me.
Baker is a Christian and knows that the bible is full of advice for patience. He signed his first Major League contract to play for the Atlanta Braves in 1967, and later was adopted by Hank Aaron, a future Baseball Hall of Famer.
The Astros only one world title in the last year was marred by a sign-stealing scandal. Major League baseball officials two years later slapped the franchise with a $5 million fine and stripped them of draft picks. In the aftermath, the Astros tried to clean up their front office. As part of that effort, they hired Baker, who went from taking the Astros to the American League Championship Series his first season to a second-place finish in last year’s World Series to this: A ring that wasn’t tainted.
Baker thought about his pre-World Series supporters (including a sports journalist friend), and he said, “There were people of color everywhere I go, and people of non-color. Hey, man. We are all family.