Integrity of the game

Sally Jenkins gets lyrical about the "integrity of the game" for the Washington Post.

Not a large percentage of fans visit Cooperstown; many fans ignore the All-Star game; most fans could not say who won the Cy Young last year; the majority of fans give up on the season and turn to football, or yardwork, or whatever, when their team is eliminated from the playoffs. Bonds is after an individual record in what most people enjoy as a team sport.

So why should we care about the home runs in a career record? Over and over we are told we do, we must, we will care about such things. The Giants stink this year, and they challenge no one for nothing in the standings. I don't care about the math about that team's obnoxiously talented and over-the-hill clean-up hitter. But I will get out of my seat to ask this question because I do not like to see so many heads exploding.

Baseball writing has its own stories, and they are not always much like the stories most often experienced by the fans of the game. No baseball writer in the country thinks Jack Wilson is a great shortstop, yet he's pretty much adored by the people who pay to enter PNC Park. There are many disconnects between the revellers and the bards who sing about them, and this Bonds thing might be a big one.

The Phillies lost 10,000 games. Is that not a more significant - yet still insignificant - bit of trivia? I feel bad for the Philadelphians who have most lived through that. Well, no I don't, but I could if I thought more about it. Somewhere there is an 85-year-old secretary or clerk who has persisted through some bad luck at listening to games on the radio.

Why does Bonds matter? Do that many people care so much? Is it wise or good or useful for writers about a team sport to express such concern about statistics that have nothing to do with wins and losses, or with the pursuit of a championship?

I also smirk at the suggestion that this game has (or should have) some kind of integrity that all do (or must) respect and keep holy. "Integrity" is more important to hundreds of more important American institutions. There must be integrity in government, for example, and in the courts, and in law enforcement. Why is the integrity of baseball a high priority?

What's next? The integrity of video games? The integrity of hamburgers? It's laughable to assert that baseball has, or should have, some kind of "integrity" that compels all fans to entertain such serious attitudes about a pretty trivial statistical milestone.