Matching a player's home-run total against that of Maris or Ruth is at least based on actual accomplishment.

Sammy Sosa, untouched in the Balco hearings, nevertheless diminishes in size at the same ratio as his home-run totals.

McGwire, Sosa and Bonds will all have home-run totals worthy of the Hall.

Will Sosa's plaque mention his plummeting home-run totals and shirt size?

As it stands, who wound up with the better home-run total in his home park?

They believe that his eye-popping home-run totals of the past few years were "artificially encouraged," as Hemingway once said of doped-up racehorses.

Instead, they report, plans are being made in San Francisco for the day in 2006 when Mr. Bonds seems destined to pass Babe Ruth's home-run total.

Small ball was once the standard by which the game was played during the "dead-ball era" at the beginning of the 20th century, when both batting averages and home-run totals dropped to historic lows.

As he tries to pass the home-run totals of Babe Ruth and Henry Aaron, Bonds is still trying to manipulate the world around him.

But Long, whose batting average was .237 and whose home-run total was 15, smashed a drive into the right-field stands.