As fas as I know the Major League lifetime Home Run record is the most
famous individual record in American sports. Barry Bonds is just 22 Home Runs away from that record, yet there is not real excitement about it.

Barry Bonds is having a very nice Spring Training(at the time of this article he had 5 Home Runs)with less than two weeks until the start of the 2007 season. There was much more of a buzz in the Valley of the Sun in the Phoenix Area because Sammy Sosa was back in Surprise training with the Texas Rangers than in Scottsdale with the Giants Barry Bonds. At least that was the feeling I’ve got during my yearly visit to Spring Training.(By the way I saw Sosa and he looked great and made the roster also)

One of the reasons I really love Spring Training is that I can do my work,interviews,promos and so on with the players,then sit in the Press Box for a few innings and then walk around among the fans under the radiant sun talking baseball. I definetely didn’t hear much conversation about Barry Bonds and the record that is about to be broken. When the Giants visited Tempe to play the Angels I sat with Doug Greenwald who was broadcasting the game for sfgiants.com.
During that game Bonds walked and struck out. On the left side of the field where the Giants had their dogout everytime Bonds came to the plate there was a lot of applause, while in the first-base side where the Angels had their dogout people boooed Bonds. It should have been a standing ovation by everybody in a perfect world ! This man is going after baseball immortality, where nobody has gone before. I think this is very sad for the game, there is no other way to describe

Maybe the most revealing fact about this is what the Commissioner of Baseball Bud H. Selig said a couple of months ago during his visit to the Bay Area in the Fox Sports Bay Area luncheon.event.
He said that he "might not be in attendance when Bonds breaks the record". Selig also said: "I also missed Roger Clemens game when he won his 300TH". With all respect to the Commissioner but you can’t tell me that hitting a 755th or 756th Home Run is not a much more important ocassion than a pitcher winning his 300th game. How many pitchers have won 300 or more ? And, how many hitters have 755 Home Runs ? OK. I rest my case.

What the Commissioner said in his visit to the Bay Area speaks volumes about how he and Major League Baseball feel about Barry Bonds. No doubt about it, this is hurting the game. There is no excitement about Bonds reaching this milestone among baseball’s fanhood, I do not read any articles about it or hear much about it on the radio. Amazing but true.

When I first arrived into the US in 1961 the whole country was talkking about Roger Maris, who hit 61 Home Runs to establish the new record.It was Ruth and Maris the talk.
This was in Miami, where there was no Major League team. The only Major League team down there played in Spring Training, the Baltimore Orioles. Then came 1998 when McGwire and Sosa took the baseball world by storm. People were talking in the streets about who was ahead. People that never followed the game were talking at work about Sosa-McGwire. No doubt that in 1961 Major League Baseball was the premier league in this country, unlike today where the NFL is #1. But still in 1961 there was excitement among baseball fans and non baseball fans alike the historic Ruth Home Run record that was broken by Roger Maris.

Today (not that far from 1998)only 9 years later Bonds is within striking distance of the all-time Home Run record and you read more about HGH than "the record". A sign of the times ? Maybe there are way too many distractions, the Internet, Fantasy Leagues, Cable TV, On Demand TV and a million things to talk about aside baseball.
But I would think that a record of such magnitude would have the whole country talking.

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Amaury is on his first season as Spanish play by play announcer for Los Angeles Angels on all 162 regular season games.