The Last Six Years, In a Nutshell

There's an excellent essay about Barry Bonds' inevitable eclipsing of Babe Ruth's home run total, posted on the Page 2 section of ESPN's website. I highly recommend reading the whole thing. I was particularly impressed with the following passage:

"In November 2000, the United States held a presidential election, and nobody knew who won, so we just kind of made up an outcome and tried to act like that was normal. Less than a year later, airplanes flew into office buildings, and everybody cried for two months. And then Enron went bankrupt, and the U.S. started acting like a rogue state, and "The Simple Life" premiered, and gasoline became unaffordable, and our Olympic basketball team lost to Puerto Rico, and we reelected the same president we never really elected in the first place. Later, there would be some especially devastating hurricanes and three Oscars for an especially bad movie called "Crash."

"Things, as they say, have been better."

From "The Breaking Point" by Chuck Klosterman, writing for ESPN the Magazine.