In recent years I have thought to myself, if someone who is not suspected of steroids hits over 61 home runs, will people recognize him as the single season home run champion?  In the past I’ve thought of people like Albert Pujols or Miguel Cabrera being the ones to surpass the mark, but this season has brought a new player into light. Chris Davis is currently on pace to hit 61.44 home runs this season. So if he does surpass 61 home runs, would he be thought of as the single season home run king?

Part of me wants to say no, and part of me wants to say yes.  Myself, growing up in what is now called the steroid era, wants to say that those players hitting bombs on whatever they were on were saving the game, and deserve the record.  Before the famed home run race of 1998 between Sammy Sosa and Mark McGuire, the league was struggling to win the fans back after a strike shortened the 1994 season.  The strike lasted nearly two thirds of a year and caused the loss of the playoffs and World Series for the 1994 season.  Attendance and ratings struggled in the years to follow as fans turned away from MLB during the strike to tune in to NFL and into NBA as Michael Jordan returned to basketball for the 1995-96 season.  The saving grace for MLB was the ‘98 home run race.

The old saying goes, “Chicks dig the long ball,” well, it’s more like everyone digs the long ball.  As Sosa and McGuire went back and forth all summer long, fans returned to the parks to be a part of history and turned in to every game to keep track of a historical event.  When the race continued again the following season, fans continued to watch in awe as Sosa and McGuire went back and forth once again.  The third year of the home run chase brought the league’s most popular player to love and hate, Barry Bonds, into the mix with Sosa.  In the end, one of the greatest players to ever play the game ended up with the title of single season home run king.  Fans were fully engaged again, and even now that it is suspected that all three were using some kind of performance enhancing drugs to break that record in three straight seasons, it is hard to ignore that they broke the record and what breaking the record did for the game.

The flip side of this, though, is what the baseball writers of America, and MLB will say about it.  These writers have black-balled all three of the guys who were in the home run races, by not voting a single one of them into the Hall of Fame.  Without the cloud of suspicion over their heads, the three men would have been deadlock first ballot Hall of Famers.  With the cloud of suspicion, Bonds, one of the greatest players to ever play the game, did not get in on the first ballot, and Sosa and McGuire are still waiting on the call years after retirement.  This makes me believe that it is possible that the baseball writers and MLB might be so ecstatic that someone like Davis, who has no ties to steroids, breaks the original record that they may very well proclaim him the single season home run king.

To me, I will never say that anyone other than Bonds will be the single season home run king unless they surpass his mark.  It’s not because I don’t care about the fact that he may have enhanced himself using steroids. It’s not that I grew up watching him. In fact, I can’t stand Barry Bonds.  The reason I believe no one will be the king by surpassing 61 is the same reason I didn’t like the asterisk next to Roger Maris’ name, because it doesn’t matter how you did it, it just matters that you did it.  To me, once you’re the king, you’re the king, and until Davis, or someone else, surpasses 73 home runs, Bonds will forever be the king.