Baseball fathers pass to their children not just a misty-eyed nostalgia, but also a series of sacred numbers: 60, 61, 70, and 73; 714 and 755. These, too, are a source of mourning. Each time the game's records are surpassed, there's rejoicing, then recoiling, then a hunt for a scapegoat. No matter that every player's stats are tainted by something: endemic racism, the live ball, the dead ball, the spitball, World War II, the Korean War, small ballparks, the DH, the dilution of pitching—the latest taint is always the most tainted of them all. When Roger Maris hit 61 in '61, Commissioner Ford Frick pleaded for an asterisk on account of the 162-game season. When Mark McGwire and then Barry Bonds surpassed Maris' mark by bloating their bodies like cartoon characters, we cheered the gentle giants, then chided them in hindsight for their artificially induced gigantism.