Did you even know it was happening last night?
Some of my fondest sporting memories as a kid were watching the likes of Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, and Mark McGwire chase down those seemingly untouchable home run records.
There was a nervous anticipation watching those historic at-bats that I haven’t felt before or since.
SportsCenter would break into their programming to give live coverage of an at-bat in like the 4th inning.
It was crazy.
Yet now, here we are 20 years later, and I bet half of sports fans even have a clue.
Aaron Judge tied Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record on Tuesday night.
He’s 1 away from Roger Maris, 2 away from the all-time American League record, yet nationally, it feels like afterthought.
Maybe it’s the regionalization of Major League Baseball.
Maybe it’s our collective doubt that anyone could still be clean.
Maybe baseball’s marketing just sucks.
Or maybe – and I suspect it’s this – maybe, we didn’t care that those other dudes were juiced.
We just wanted to be entertained and those guys in the late 90’s and early 2000’s did it better than Judge or anybody else.
It’s not fair to Judge.
It’s probably not even morally defensible.
Whatever Judge accomplishes in the next two weeks will be awesome, but in my mind, Barry Bonds still has the high water mark at 73.
I don’t think I’m alone in feeling that way.
