Can't top the Babe
May 29, 2006

BARRY BONDS has eclipsed Babe Ruth's 714 home run total. But no one changed the game the way Ruth did, and many of the Babe's notable activities will never be topped. Here, as taken from Leigh Montville's splendid biography, ``The Big Bam," are a few:

[P6: list of truly ghetto shit redacted]

Bonds, with his flaws, is a great player, but no one else in the history of baseball has combined athletic talent with the Falstaffian appetites and unfathomed mysteries of Babe Ruth.

Don't hate the player, hate the game.

Nah, seriously, let a guy who's not rich and/or famous get caught having "Falstaffian appetites and unfathomed mysteries." Suppose Ruth was a bum...you still be feeling Falstaff from him? Suppose Henry Aaron displayed all these "unfathomable mysteries" while he was playing (and don't act like you don't know what it was like).

The only thing Ruth did that made it all acceptable was hit home runs.

I am unaware of any personal issues Bonds has in the public eye that would make this editorialist prefer a known boozer and womanizer to him. Are steroids all that bad...especially since they were only recently made illegal in baseball?