Joe Posnanski Blog: Obviopiphany

The question is simply this: If a player, even for one season, plays at the very highest level in the history of the game — I mean at the Ruth level, the Mays level, the Williams level, the Walter Johnson level, the Sandy Koufax level — does that make the person a Hall of Famer?

... And after seeing this sort of thing over and over — the mentioning of Greg Vaughn and George Foster and Albert Belle and Jose Bautista — I realized something that I probably should have already known — my obviopiphany. People, in large part, think of big home run seasons as great seasons. In many minds, they are one in the same. Lots of home runs = A historic season. I know, this realization is hardly groundbreaking, I told you that.

... But in my obviopiphany, I wondered if it isn’t much simpler than this: Maybe the steroid rage is ALL about home runs. I mean, maybe it isn’t about anything else at all — with a little collateral damage thrown in.* Wouldn’t that explain some of these contradictions? My obviopiphany is that home runs alone define how many people look at the game. Home runs alone create the image of a great season. Home runs stay with people long after everything else. Steroids meant more home runs — fake home runs to so many — and maybe this above all is what created the stir, the Congressional hearings, the lying and cover-ups and all the other stuff. Maybe it’s no more complicated than that.