Bonds is chasing milestone, not record

The news cycles spin like the Earth. A new day, somehow a new big event must be found.

Sports fans in this country have been conditioned to anticipate the next big things, one after the others, 52 weeks a year.

These pseudo-events don't have to crown champions, or clinch a division race. They are more hype than history.

The pseudo-event has become the "SportsCenter" staple. It is the hook that draws people to ESPN, ABC, or Fox. It is the headline that, ultimately, is more important than the story.

Pick any pseudo-event. The Christmas Day meetings between former-teammates-turned-mortal-enemies-turned-friendly-acquaintances-again, Shaquille O'Neal and Kobe Bryant.

The first game between the Indiana Pacers and the Detroit Pistons after their famous brawl. Every Red Sox-Yankees game.

Larry Brown's first trip back to Detroit after leaving the Pistons for the New York Knicks. Johnny Damon's first trip back to Boston after signing as a free agent with New York. Bryant's first visit to Denver after he was accused of rape.

The news conferences before any major title fight. And every "Monday Night Football" game.

How many times did ABC hype a Monday-night record as if that record really meant something? Who really cared that that some team had won more Monday-night games than any other? Or that a wide receiver broke the record for touchdown catches on a Monday night?

The pseudo-events don't change the face of sports. Their results don't lead to ticker-tape parades. But they fuel the nightly sports cycle. They are the fodder for all the blather on the many dog days on the sports calendar.

In 1962, even before ESPN and the glut of talk radio, historian Daniel Boorstin saw this coming in a book titled "The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America." These events, he believed, offered a fake transcendence over everyday life.

And nothing makes Boorstin's point better than the countdown to Barry Bonds' 714th home run, the home run that will tie him with Babe Ruth in second place, among baseball's all-time sluggers. An event such as this satisfies the American taste for the next big thing, but it means very little.

"When we pick up newspapers at breakfast," Boorstin wrote, "we expect — we even demand — that it bring us momentous events since the night before."

But Bonds isn't chasing a record — at least not yet. Hank Aaron hit 755 home runs, a record Bonds' right knee might prevent him from breaking.

Still, "SportsCenter" and ESPN and, let's be honest, every newspaper in every city, is covering this quest as if it matters, as if all of us are holding our breaths over some second-place milestone.

That's what this is, it's a milestone, not a record.

Historians will argue whether Bonds even deserves the record. Fans pointing a homemade sign at Bonds on Sunday night in Philadelphia spoke for what appears to be the majority of baseball fans:

"Ruth did it on hotdogs and beers. Aaron did it with class. How did you do it?"

Bonds hit his 713th that night, a massive shot off the facing of the third deck at Citizens Bank Park. ESPN covered the game and must have shown a couple dozen replays of the home run.

It's hard to root for Bonds because of the poor way he has treated so many people. It's hard to root for him because the specter of steroid use will always taint everything he has done. Just as Bonds is stalking The Babe, special steroids investigator George Mitchell is stalking Bonds.

Sure, watching Bonds hit a home run is one of the most thrilling spectacles in sports. He doesn't hit the ball, he launches it, the same way Phil Mickelson launches a drive, or LeBron James launches himself. Bonds' home runs are, well, Ruthian. He is Paul Bunyan with a bat.

But let's not get carried away. The record belongs to Hank Aaron, not Babe Ruth. Aaron survived death threats and racist taunts and passed Ruth to reset the bar at 755.

This feigned media excitement over Bonds and The Babe is all hype. Just another pseudo-event in America.

Steve Kelley: 206-464-2176 or skelley@seattletimes.com