A-Rod finally hits his 600th A-bomb

Well it has happened, finally. I guess there were some people who were paying attention and cared about Alex Rodriguez hitting his 600th home run on Wednesday morning/afternoon (depending which time zone you are in). If you care, you can watch it in all its glory(?) right here at the bottom of this post. How convenient, it's embedded.

All I can say is poor Shaun Marcum, the pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays, who will forever go down in history as the guy who gave up this home run. At least he didn't give up number 756 to Barry Bonds like Mike Bacsik of the Washington Nationals. Too bad that is all they will be remembered for. Hey, someone has to be the sucker who gives up record-breaking and career milestone-achieving home runs, right? Notice how it's never a big name pitcher? It's usually just some scrub who bounces back and forth between AAA and the Majors.

Anyway, the point is how important is this home run in the scheme of things? How will Rodriguez be remembered by the fans, the media, and most importantly the Hall of Fame? There is no disputing that his legacy and any important numbers that he reaches are tarnished after his steroid-use admission. The matter at hand is to what degree is it tarnished? Personally, I think the steroid era is in the past and needs to be viewed as the dark ages of baseball. There has been new enlightenment and knowledge given and let's just move on. Who cares about who is on "the list" and who did or didn't use! The guy crushing home runs who was hopped up on HGH and a anabolic steroids was doing so with pitches from a pitcher who was also doping. It was as wide-spread as could be. It is just too hard to try and pick out who did what, when, and for how long. But most importantly, it is impossible to decipher and analyze how much the steroids helped. Plus if everybody was on them, then the playing field was even anyway. Think about it, if you didn't take steroids and everybody around you was taking them and performing at a higher level than you, why not just join in? It's either that or go join the previously mentioned milestone giving-up pitchers in the minor leagues.

In a nutshell, it is what it is. It's in the past, get over it and forget about it. Just don't forget about the dark cloud that steroids cast over the game. It is important to learn from the mistakes. To put it in the form of a cliche, there is no use crying over spilled milk, just be more careful next time (I added that last part!). In one of my first posts, I mentioned that baseball has a dying fan base and that is partly due to the steroid era. But again, commissioner Bud Selig needs to do his part to modernize the game. It's a slow process, but it needs to be done. With the game preserved and with new fans, the legacies of players such as Alex Rodriguez will gain ground and momentum in the face of what has been lost by a stagnant fan base.