E.K. NATION

So Barry Bonds has tied Willie Mays on the all-time home run list with his 660th home run. So Barry Bonds' next roundtripper will put him ahead of Willie Mays on the all-time home run list.

According to Rob Neyer's latest column on ESPN.com, Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

First, I think the milestone was, if anything, underhyped (not that I am all for Hyping Things Up, per se). I mean, this is third place on the Major League Baseball all-time home run list, for Chrissakes. Barry's next home run will mean that only two players in the history of Major League Baseball will have more home runs. And those players are Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth.

This is a major shakeup of the top of what is the most well-known and oft-memorized all-time list of anything, really. Not just sports.

Do you know who the all-time scoring leader is in the NBA? Well, it's Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. That might have been easy. But how many points did he score?

tick....tock....tick....tock....tick....tock....

I don't know. I think it's somewhere around 37,000. Now, who's second? Is it Michael Jordan? Wilt Chamberlain? Karl Malone? I'm not exactly sure. And what is the second-place total? I won't even ask. There are probably just a few of us who know.

Who are the top three touchdown scorers in National Football League history? Couldn't tell you off hand. I know Jerry Rice is in that group. Who are the other two? And what are the totals?

What other aspect of life has such an identifiable Top Three as the MLB home run list? Do we know how many #1 singles the Beatles had? Which acts have the second- and third-place totals? Is first place even owned by the Beatles? I don't know.

What are the top three money-making movies of all-time? I couldn't tell you.

But the briefest look at the numbers 755, 714 and 660? Instantly, we know: Aaron, Ruth, Mays. That's the way it's been for 30 years.

But now, it's different. Barry Bonds' name is in there now. By the end of today's game between the Giants and Brewers, the Top Three of all-time could be: Aaron, Ruth, Bonds.

Rob Neyer admits that he didn't do any checking to find out if Aaron tying/passing Willie Mays was a big deal. Neyer, by the looks of his photograph, doesn't appear to be a whole lot older than I am, and thus wouldn't have been cognizant of much in the sports world back in 1966 or 1972. So who is he to say? I don't know. Of course, nothing was hyped up much back in those days. I mean, whose all-time hit record did Ty Cobb break? Was there a passing mention of it in the papers the next day? I don't know.

But is Barry Bonds' tying/passing Willie Mays, his godfather, in the same uniform, a story worth hyping?

No. It doesn't need hyping. It's a remarkable achievement. It stands on its own.

Would we be seeing the same column from Rob Neyer if it had been Cal Ripken Jr. tying/passing Willie Mays on the home run list instead of Lou Gehrig on the consecutive-games-played list? I don't know. But I think Bonds' imminent passing of Willie Mays is the greater achievement. And Bonds' accomplishment hasn't been hyped as much as Ripken's, even though it takes incredible skill to do what Bonds does, but--let's face it--I could break Lou Gehrig's record, if only I could find a baseball owner to sign me and put me in the outfield for one batter a game for the next 15 years. All I'd have to do is show up, stand there, and not die between the first game and the 2,131st. (Not that I find something wrong with Ripken's streak at all. The guy barely missed an inning during that streak, and I do hold it in high regard.)

I just think Neyer is falling into the trap writers often fall into, and that's not giving Barry credit where he deserves it.

P.S.: I'd have kept the ball.