First Red Sox Nation, Then Colbert Nation

It's been an happy start to the week for a couple of the imagined communities which I'm proud to claim as my own. First, Sunday night, the Boston Red Sox staked a claim to being the team of this young milennium by winning their second World Series in four years. Then the latest polls out of South Carolina showed that Stephen Colbert is running in fifth place among Democratic presidential contenders. (Go to YouTube and watch the clip of Chris Dodd's face when Tim Russert tells him on Meet the Press that he's behind a TV comedian.) Colbert also apparently gains 13% of the vote nationally in a hypothetical three-way race with Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani.

The Red Sox as the toast of baseball -- again! -- and the most talented TV/pop-culture empresario of our generation (yes he's better than Jon Stewart) at the top of his game... ya gotta love it!

Barry Bonds, Cheater

Barry Bonds will break Hank Aaron's all-time home run record any day now. Everybody but the most deluded Giants fan, however, knows that this is not Barry au naturel but a chemically enhanced superman. I consider that to be cheating, and deleterious to the sport which treasures its history probably more than any other.

I was recently forwarded a nifty Powerpoint presentation -- and it wasn't even from the military, who uses that program as it primary method of transmitting information -- that detailed Bonds's statistical straying from the norm (and that of Mark McGwire). That is, it is axiomatic that athletes' productivity declines with age. Bonds and McGwire, more than anyone else, only got better with age.

To wit:

• In terms of career at-bats (AB) per home run (HR), McGwire leads history at 10.6, followed by Babe Ruth with 12.0, Bonds at 13.1, Albert Pujols at 14.1, Harmon Killebrew (really!) and Manny Ramirez at 14.2, and then Alex Rodriguez (about to get his 500th, hopefully on the road to passing Bonds's eventual number) at 14.3, and Sammy Sosa (another dubious performer) at 14.5.
• Splitting up performance before and after the age of 36, Bonds and McGwire were 17% and 27%, respectively more productive (again, AB per HR) than the next closest player, Ruth (under 36, of course). The next closest over 36 players were Frank Thomas and Babe Ruth, both about 45% and 60% behind Bonds and McGwire, respectively.
• Bonds's and McGwire's best seasons were 26% and 17% more productive, respectively, than the next best player, Ruth. And Ruth is followed closely by Sosa. The ages of these four players during their best seasons? Bonds 37, McGwire 35, Sosa 33, Ruth 25.
• Of the 25 players whose best seasons were the most productive (that is, not counting more than one season of any one player), the average age was 28.4. The average age of Bonds, McGwire, Sosa, and Rafael Palmeiro (a top-25er who admitted taking steroids) was 35.0.

'nuff said.