To be fair, anyone who can reach Babe Ruth's legendary home run mark deserves some respect. Although the circumstances might be dubious, there's no denying the Giant star's talent.
But enough about Sadaharu Oh.
As long as we're honoring Barry Bonds, let's give some love to one of the greatest Giants of all — the Yomiuri Giants' inimitable Mr. Oh. He didn't just eclipse Ruth, he obliterated him. In 22 years he hit a record 868 home runs, 113 more than Hank Aaron and 154 more than Ruth. In almost exactly the same number of years, Bonds has hit 713, one shy of Ruth.
So let's forget about those nagging little credibility gaps and hand over the kudos to Oh, same as Bonds. They're two of a kind, in a way.
Through different means and measures, they each reached Ruthian proportions. Now it's up to the baseball experts to decide their place in history.
Want to know the real truth? I have a hard time taking either of them seriously. One became the all-time professional leader by hitting homers in smaller ballparks, with weaker pitching and shorter seasons. The other built his statistic using substances he called "the clear" and "the cream" and allegedly a host of other performance aids.
And both showed their selfishness when chasing Ruth.
Bonds' history of arrogance and self-centeredness is legendary: stories of admiring his muscles in the mirror, mistreating trainers and assistants, abusing his girlfriend and demanding his private entourage be allowed in the locker room. He isn't popular among teammates. Few would deny he is a narcissistic bore.
At the same time, Oh had his own moments of egotism. Take, for example, the fact he protected one hitting record by completely eliminating the possibility of being passed. In 1985, American Randy Bass entered the last series of the Japanese professional season with 54 home runs. That put him one shy of Oh's single-season league record, set in 1964. With Bass about to catch him, Oh — then manager of the Tokyo Giants — ordered his pitchers to intentionally walk Bass each at-bat in the final two games.
Bass ended up one short of the mark.
Tuffy Rhodes hit 55 for the Kintetsu Buffaloes in 2001 but ended up facing another team Oh managed, and again Oh's pitchers avoided the challenger by walking him intentionally or throwing away from him.
When Alex Cabrera hit 55 home runs in Japan in 2002, he was frozen out the final games of the season by pitchers — including those from Oh's team — and remained tied for the record.
The selfishness displayed by Oh earned him the No. 2 spot on ESPN.com's "Phoniest Records in Sports" list.
That isn't to say Oh wasn't a great hitter. Former players such as Pete Rose, Don Baylor, Frank Howard, Greg Luzinski, Brooks Robinson, Tom Seaver and Don Drysdale said he would have been an All-Star had he played in the U.S.
There's nobody denying Bonds always had the talent to be a star in the Major Leagues, with or without steroids.
But there are those nagging questions. With Bonds, the concern is how many homers may have been aided by performance-enhancing substances.
With Oh, it's how many he would have hit against Major League pitching.
While Japan's league is almost certainly inferior to MLB, the fact that Japanese stars such as Ichiro Suzuki and Hideki Matsui have become stars in the U.S. proves there is Major League talent in the Land of the Rising Sun. Similarly, Japan recently won the World Baseball Classic.
But would Oh have hit 868 home runs against Major League pitching? Not likely.
Fortuitously, Oh, or O, is the Japanese spelling of the Chinese surname Wang, which means king. It is only fitting, then, that a guy with that name would hold the all-time homer record. And it's only fitting another selfish slugger would be the most recent guy to catch Ruth. So congratulations to both for chasing down the most famous baseball player of all time.
The king is dead, long live the kings.
E-mail: rock@desnews.com