This column originally ran in The Standard-Times on Dec. 10, 2004.

By Nick Tavares

Through all the allegations, confessions and repercussions of the steroids scandal in baseball the last two weeks, one announcement managed to fly under the radar.

On Tuesday, Bud Selig and the Major League Baseball offices announced that plans to market Barry Bonds' pursuit of Hank Aarons' career home run record had been put off, which included a campaign with MasterCard.

It wasn't just that it was significant as a sign that baseball will no longer be fully behind Bonds, it was something much more symbolic.

Baseball has all but renounced its storied record book.

And as an admitted statistics geek, I'm furious.

Since 1994, offense through the sport had been on an incredible rise, with players who struggled to top 20 home runs in the past now bashing out 40 and sometimes 50 with alarming regularity.

There were several theories, including expansion, weaker pitching, smaller parks and even a juiced ball, but none of those could ever fully explain how Brady Anderson went from 16 home runs in 1995 to 50 in 1996.

No, the ball wasn't juiced, the players were. And now the numbers mean nothing.

Roger Maris' record of 61 home runs in a season went 37 years before falling. He's been passed six times now. Hank Aaron's 755 career dingers will stand for at least 29 years but not much longer, it seems.

I've always enjoyed analyzing stats and measuring the numbers of different players in different eras against each other. But with all the offense, that had already become impossible.

For example, players like Al Kaline, Carl Yastrzemski and Dave Winfield were all considered (rightfully so) to be power hitters, but none totaled more than Winfield's 465 home runs, and they all played at least 22 seasons.

Jeff Bagwell is currently sitting on 484 home runs in 14 seasons. He's probably as good as any of the guys listed above, but there's no way to compare anymore.

Bagwell spent years in the hitter-unfriendly Astrodome and has probably been on the level, but it goes to show that even the innocent are suspect.

How many more power hitters could have been cheating? Was Jim Thome on the juice? Sammy Sosa? Luis Gonzalez? Alex Rodriguez? Trot Nixon? Javy Lopez? Troy Glaus?

I've never been a fan of the long ball anyway -- home runs are boring. Unless it's the last inning of a home game, there's nothing that exciting about watching someone trot around the bases again and again. I root for pitching duels, defense up the middle, the suicide squeeze and diving catches in the outfield.

For crying out loud, my favorite player ever (I'll let you guess who) spent the first two-thirds of his career as a utility infielder and had 49 career round-trippers.

But all that has slowly disappeared in the last 10 years, replaced by one slugfest after another. A 10-9 score doesn't even look out of place anymore.

I'll still watch and enjoy baseball, but it's hard to take it at more than face value now.

Even if daily testing and lifetime suspensions were imposed today, steroids have permanently left a black mark on the game. It took away the subtleties (of players like my beloved Tim Naehring), the meaning and the history.

It also took away one of my favorite hobbies.

Nick Tavares is a columnist for The Standard-Times. E-mail him at ntavares@s-t.com

This story appeared on Page C1 of The Standard-Times on December 10, 2004.