In a sports world without cable, ESPN, sports-talk radio stations or the 24-hour news cycle, Hank Aaron hit his 715th home run. The only stations that mattered were numbered 2 to 13, and on NBC stations on the night of April 8, 1974, Aaron's home run generated a 22.3 rating and a 36 share, meaning 14.7 million households watched some part of the broadcast. Move ahead 33 years and four months to Barry Bonds' record-breaking home run, which was carried nationally on ESPN2. The game generated a 1.1 rating, with 995,000 households and an average of 1.3 million viewers.
Put another way? 10.75 million people—or, approximately ten times the number of viewers who tuned in to see Barry Bonds' home run—instead spent the evening of Tuesday, August 7th watching America's Got Talent in the hopes of seeing a real accomplishment (i.e. a juggling unicyclist-slash-opera-singer) rather than a record-breaking achievement a mere asterisk in the pages of baseball history.
• Hillary Clinton is said to dress even manlier than war hero John McCain.
• This America's Got Talent contestant's routine wasn't supposed to include falling flat on his face.
• Lady Bird Johnson dead at the age of 94.
• David Beckham is all about the little girl's Fruit of the Looms
• Lil' Kim shows us that magical nipple slip, one more time.
• Maybe we aren't as green as Al Gore thought we were. Or maybe we just don't want to sit at home and watch Bravo all day.
• If we had a Roy Lichtenstein-esque picture of ourselves on a shirt, we'd probably wear it around, too.
• Apparently, the iPhone also makes a great smoothie.
