I'm Famous...Well Sort of

Because I work in advertising, I get daily emails from Advertising Age. Sometimes they poll their readers. A few weeks back the poll was about Barry Bonds and whether Major League Baseball should market his breaking of the Homerun records (There are two, Ruth still has the record for career homeruns by a left-hander). Well on March 20th they published the results (I know I'm a little late on this but I just found out). Anyway 84% of the voters said MLB should not any marketing around Barry Bonds as he approaches the record.

Of course being the contrarian that I am, I had to disagree. The neat thing about these AdAge polls is that they have a feedback field where you can submit a comment along with your vote. So I was quoted:

But Henry Gomez, planning director, for Miami Beach-based Abecé, points out that baseball's steroid policy was only enacted last year and the drugs in question were not against the rules during the time Mr. Bonds is alleged to have used them. "MLB can't simply ignore Barry Bonds when he surpasses Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron," Mr. Gomez wrote. "Even if Bonds surpasses Ruth there will still be a lively debate about who was better. ...It's exactly this type of debate that baseball thrives on. And that's why MLB should play up Bonds' achievements, as an invitation to debate.

I just feel that not commemorating Bonds' achievements will create even more of a firestorm around the steroid scandal than if they did. Forgetting steroids it's almost impossible (unless you write for baseballprospectus.com) to compare players from different eras. Mound height, stadium dimensions, the ball, bat weights all have changed and that's just to name a few variables.

I love baseball and I love to debate; my guess is that most baseball fans do too. So let the debate begin!