I Let the Melody Shine, Let it Cleanse My Mind

One of my favorite developments over the past year has been Chuck Klosterman's monthly essays for ESPN the Magazine. This month, Chuck weighs in with his thoughts on Barry Bonds' impending passage of Babe Ruth in the baseball record books.

One of the most relevant points that Klosterman makes in his essay is that historians in the future will use Bonds' steroid-fueled performance over the past few years to frame the debate over what baseball was like at the turn of the 21st century, and the substance of that debate will feed into the larger debate over what American life was like at the turn of the 21st century. It might be a significant stretch to compare Bonds' chemically-altered records to the financial reports that were produced by corrupt figures at Enron, but the motivation behind those actions were probably closer than you think.

When historians look back at American history and culture in 200 years, what are they going to say? Are they going to look at the turn of the 21st century and see that the actions of CEOs at Enron, Tyco, and WorldCom were anomalies or were they simply a harbinger of things to come? Were the similarly selfish actions of baseball stars such as Sammy Sosa, Mark McGwire, and Barry Bonds another avenue of self-promotion and disregard for the established mores of a game another reflection of the human drive towards individual recognition and triumph?

I'm not sure what the historians are going to write, but the only ability that we have to influence history is by recognizing what our actions look like today.