Thing is, this happens. Ask Dale Murphy, who finished an injury-plagued 1992 season with the Phillies with 398 career home runs. The two-time National League MVP, who had played the bulk of his career in Atlanta, came back in 1993, fully expecting to boost his total over 400.
"The Phillies came to me and asked me if I wanted to keep going," Murphy said yesterday in a phone interview. "They said they would move me. They traded me to Colorado, where there was some excitement because it was the Rockies' first year."
Murphy played 26 games for the Rockies before retiring - with 398 home runs.
"If you were a righthanded hitter and couldn't hit one out at Mile High Stadium, it was time to retire," Murphy said.
He was 37, which is right around the time most of baseball's great power hitters lose their home-run stroke. From Jimmie Foxx to Willie Mays to Harmon Killebrew to Mike Schmidt, it seems that great home-run hitters lost their power virtually overnight.
It is nature's way, which is what brings us to Bonds.
"When I was 37, I had to retire," Murphy said. "The year Bonds turned 37, he hit 73 home runs. That's pretty good."
Murphy, now 51, has gotten tired of reading and hearing about steroids in baseball. That doesn't make him different from most fans of the game. The difference is that Murphy has decided to do something about it. As a believer in the game and as a father, he felt compelled to start a foundation devoted to teaching young athletes that performance-enhancing drugs are simply wrong ethically, as well as physically disastrous.
"We want to challenge young players on the ethical side," Murphy said. "This is cheating. This is not the way to live your life. We need to challenge them on that level, because otherwise, they see dollar signs, they see scholarships, they see guys getting away with it at the highest levels of sports."
