AP News, November 16th, 2007
The 91-year-old daughter of Babe Ruth hopes the federal indictment of home run king Barry Bonds will allow people to focus on what's important: baseball.
"I feel bad for Bonds," Julia Ruth Stevens said Thursday by telephone from her winter home in Arizona. "The fact is, is that his career is tarnished completely now that the indictment has come down. That is going to be a tremendous punishment for him."
A federal grand jury indicted Bonds on Thursday with four counts of perjury and one count of obstruction of justice. If convicted, he could be sentenced to a maximum of 30 years in prison.
"I don't think anything like this is good for baseball. It casts a shadow, and I hope it will all be ironed out and taken care of before spring training starts so people will just forget about it and we can just play ball," she said.
Ruth Stevens said all the speculation and innuendo about steroids didn't ruin her love of the game. And for her, there is no debate about who's the greatest player of all time.
"As far as I'm concerned no one will ever break my father's record ... I still feel that Daddy is the king of baseball, I really do," she said. Babe Ruth hit 714 career home runs, which puts him third on the all-time list.
Sitting in her home recovering from hip surgery, Ruth Stevens said she had followed Bonds' case closely but is reserving judgment on the slugger's guilt until all the facts are known.
She said if her father were alive today he would feel angry and sad about the state of baseball.
