Remember when Alex Rodriguez and Barry Bonds were supposed to be the guys who were going to make us forget about Hank Aaron except as a baseball footnote?

They were the sluggers whose fence-clearing exploits were going to demolish Hammerin' Hank's home run records and banish him to some dusty, distant corner of Cooperstown.

Instead, with each passing day, they are doing quite the opposite.

With each sordid revelation about performance-enhancing drugs, they have succeeded in helping Aaron stand considerably taller in the perspective of history than the 6 feet, 180 pounds that his final baseball cards describe him as. With each mea culpa interview, like yesterday's A-Rod sitdown with Peter Gammons, they have polished Aaron's Hall of Fame plaque a little brighter.

If Aaron and his 756 career home runs loom larger today than they did when he retired in 1976, the year after Rodriguez was born, well, we're pretty sure it isn't because of anything he was injecting himself with.

And, these days as we wait for the outing of the other 103 names who failed the 2003 drug tests, how many on the all-time home run list can you say that about?

Bonds overtook Aaron for major league baseball's career home run leadership and Rodriguez is the man projected to supplant him. As Bonds, owner of 762 home runs, prepares to go to trial, Rodriguez, claimant to 553 home runs, was supposed to someday clear the taint of scandal from ownership of sports' most prestigious record.

Instead, as the frauds and failings of Rodriguez and Bonds are exposed, Aaron's standing as a champion is further certified.

If you were fortunate enough to have watched Aaron in his heyday with the then-Milwaukee Braves the thought of him bulking up on anything more than hot dogs is ridiculous. Aaron was so lean that when he was given uniform No. 44, the joke was that he was too skinny to be in double digits.

But we know enough about Aaron to understand you wouldn't have found him lying to Katie Couric, Congress or a federal grand jury. The only charge that ever stuck against Aaron was that he wasn't Babe Ruth. Hardly anything to diminish his standing or cause federal prosecutors to mount up, especially when much of it was racially motivated.

Aaron's saga is testament that the currents of history flow in curious ways. After living in the considerable shadow of Ruth for most of his life and suffering for it, an aging Aaron, going on 33 years after his last home run, is finally getting some of the respect his accomplishments long ago should have entitled him to.

And, in a twist of irony, it is the players who were intent upon reducing them that have done the most to help, their chemically enhanced brawn hoisting Aaron all the higher.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.