Baseball Fans: Forget 756, The Magic Number Is 868

USA Today has a great piece on the five ways that baseball fans can deal with Barry Bonds' impending "record" breaking homerun, but there's another way: Acknowledge that the real home run record belongs to Sadaharu Oh, the legendary homerun hitter who hit 868 homeruns in the Japanese baseball leagues.

Oh was everything Bonds isn't: classy, humble, honest and powered by strength, courage, dignity, hard work....and no illegal drugs.

For years Oh's record was dismissed because the Japanese leagues were thought to be inferior, but the recent success of Japanese ball players in the U.S. should dispel that myth.

Oh was a true champion on and off the field. Growing up in Japan I watched hundreds of his homeruns sail far beyond the right field fences, powered by his unique flamingo-like stance. In the off-season, he continued a unique training regimen which included using a katana or Japanese sword to slice papers that an assistant would throw in the air.

The Taiwanese born Oh has long been a national treasure in Japan and now he deserves to be one here. True baseball fans around the country can relax, yawn and turn the channel when Bonds hits 756. The real record belongs to Oh, and Barry Bonds isn't fit to tie the true champion's shoe laces and will never touch his majestic record of 868 homeruns.

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