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Quietly – or as quietly as a 6-foot-3, 240-pound, heavy-lumber-swinging ox of a human being can – Chris Davis passed the 40-home run mark this week. He's at 41, actually, the last one as Chris Davis a shot as there can be, towering and resplendent and a reminder of the majesty that still exists with home runs, especially ones he hits.

Baseball spent a lot of time this week in introspective mode. From the dissection of Alex Rodriguez's 647 home runs to the lesson in hypocrisy of how hyper-vigilant baseball once rode steroids to its homer-fueled resurgence, one does not come up in conversation without the other, even if most performance-enhancing drug users partake of their particular drug more to speed up injury recovery than whack balls over fences.

Home runs are still the casualty anyway. That might be the saddest piece of damage done by PEDs: not the obliteration of records as much as turning such a vital piece of the game into a curse. Home runs are still exciting as hell. They just come with a caveat, especially when they come in bunches, as they have off the bat of Davis all season.

There is a stigma on home run hitters. The guy who owns the all-time and single-season records looked like Bane. There were as many 40-home run hitters in 1996 alone as there were over the last five seasons. The home run was bastardized, so much that this is the twisted reality of today: Because Davis has hit so many, the suspicion shifts toward him, no matter how unwarranted it may be. Such is the result of Alex Rodriguez serially doping for three years and beating every test.

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"I hope people can start to think this is real again," Davis said recently, and it was a plea for both baseball and himself. All year long, in interviews and even Twitter responses, Davis has deemed himself the clean home run hitter. In a sport where Rafael Palmeiro wagged his finger and Ryan Braun insisted his innocence and Jhonny Peralta lied by accusing others of lying and countless other instances, Chris Davis, 27, of Longview, Texas, has asked for our trust.

He did this over All-Star weekend, when he was the story not just because of his incredible first half but his insistence that he believes the real single-season home run record is Roger Maris' 61. And he continues to be the story because when he doesn't hit home runs it's an anomaly and when he does hit home runs it is rocket fuel for the cynics.

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