HOME RUN CHASE Babe's daughter isn't watching Bonds

The family feels Hank Aaron's accomplishment fulfilled their obligation to baseball.
CHICAGO (AP) -- If Barry Bonds catches The Babe, the legendary slugger's family members won't be there to see it.
They might not be watching at all.
Babe Ruth's daughter, Julia Ruth Stevens, said Friday she hasn't paid much attention as Bonds inches closer to her father's home run mark. At 711 homers, Bonds is four shy of passing Ruth for second place on the career list.
"I don't even think about it unless somebody brings it up and asks me," the 88-year-old Stevens said during a visit to Wrigley Field with her son, Tom Stevens. "It's not something that dwells on my mind or anything like that. Hank Aaron has already, way back, passed him.
"It doesn't make any difference how many people break his record," she added. "People will always remember Daddy as being the first one to do it."
Mystical appeal
Though Aaron holds the career record with 755 home runs, Ruth's 714 continues to hold something of a mystical appeal. Maybe it's that Ruth's record stood for 39 years, a seemingly unattainable mark of excellence. Maybe it was his overall success, arguably the greatest slugger of all time.
Or maybe it's simply that Ruth came first. By setting the bar as high as he did, he demanded that anyone who chased him not only be lucky and good, but great.
"As long as there's baseball," Stevens said, "Daddy's name is always going to be used."
Ruth earned the nickname "The Sultan of Swat" for his incredible productivity at the plate. He led the majors in homers in 12 of his 22 seasons, hitting 45 or more nine times. When he hit a record 60 in 1927, it was more than any other team in the American League that season.
Many career records
By the time he retired in 1935, he held career records for home runs, RBIs (2,213), extra-base hits (1,356), walks (2,062), and on-base and slugging averages.
He'd set single-season marks for homers, extra-base hits, total bases and walks. Most of the records stood for decades (Bonds tied the career extra-base hits record Friday night).
Ruth's personality, as grand as his game, makes him an icon to this day. He had a penchant for carousing, trying to make up for everything he'd missed growing up at St. Mary's Industrial School, a reformatory and orphanage.
His sale to the New York Yankees in December 1919 left a curse on the Boston Red Sox for 85 years, and his "called shot" in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series remains one of the best stories in sports.
"He was a very special person," said Stevens, who was 12 when Ruth married her mother, Claire, and adopted her. "So many people today I think have heard stories about him from their fathers, their grandfathers, and it grows. It seems to grow every year and get bigger.
"I remember when I gave one of my books ... to a kid about 12 years old," she said. "I got the nicest thank you note from him. He said how much he enjoyed the book, how much it meant to him and how when he was grown up and got married and had children, he was going to tell them all about Babe Ruth."
And nothing can ever diminish that, regardless of where Ruth stands in the record books.
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