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Barry Bonds is, arguably, the most admired or most vilified ballplayer of this century. Your viewpoint no doubt has a lot to do with whether or not you believe he did, or did not, use steroids. The Home Run Record, from the time of Babe Ruth to Hank Aaron to Barry Bonds, has always carried with it a weight of mythic proportions. It is the Mt. Everest of baseball records. In the past few months Barry's pursuit has become a ubiquitous quest, written about in even non-sports publications.

That ubiquitous status, however, has not extended itself into the realm of popular music. Most of the best ballplayers (and some of the not-so-best) of the past have been celebrated in song and poetry. To the best of my knowledge this is not true of Barry Bonds. If Barry is truly the icon that he believes himself to be, that his (admittedly) many fans believe him to be, how come there have been no songs written, no CD's recorded, in honor of what should be a heroic and mythic quest?

Baseball and Pop Music have always enjoyed a symbiotic relationship. From "Take Me Out To The Ballgame" to Steve Goodman's "A Dying Cub Fans Last Request", the record breaking events and the player's that accomplished them have always been memorialized. For instance, when Jackie Robinson broke the colored line in baseball, Count Basie and His Orchestra remembered the event by recording "Did You See Jackie Robinson Hit The Ball?". Larry Doby, the first black to play in the American League a year after Jackie made his debut, was immortalized with two recordings: Fatman Humphries "Doby At The Bat" and Freddie Mitchell's swinging "Dobie's Boogie". Blues singer Bowrnie McGhee immortalized both Robinson and Doby with his recording of the "Robbie-Doby Boogie".

Stachel Paige, the oldest rookie to ever play the game, was remembered in the "Ballad of Satchel Paige" by Raynola Smith. In l956 Red River Dave celebrated Don Larsen's perfect game in the "Ballad of Don Larsen". Red River Dave must have been a real baseball fan because he followed that up with "The Pine-Tarred Bat (The Ballad of George Brett). When Aaron was chasing the Babe, many records recounted the feat: "Hey Hank (I Know You're Gonna Do It) by Nellie Briles ( a major league pitcher for, among others, the St. Louis Cardinals). Bill Slayback recorded "Move Over Babe(Here Comes Henry).

Joe Dimaggio's 56 game hitting streak was immortalized in the song "Joltin' Joe Dimaggio" by Les Brown and His Band of Reknown. The Charlie Ventura Orchestra weighed

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