An outstanding job of not giving Bonds strikes to swing at. No, really. :rolleyes:
A columnist in the Bay Area yesterday recalled the situation at the end of the 1998 season; going into the last series of the season against Montreal, St Louis manager Tony Larussa publicly shamed the Expos into throwing strikes to McGwire, and he hit 5.
The Astros are certainly justified in doing whatever they think is necessary to win (although they’re probably just fighting with St Louis to see which is the division winner, and which is the wild card). The Dodgers, though, are out of it, and will have no justification not to pitch to Barry next weekend. Perhaps Dusty Baker should get his PR machine working, and start questioning the Dodgers’ manhood.
Oh, really? The Dodgers and the Giants HATE each other. It’s one of the greatest baseball rivalries of all time, going back 100 years to when the teams were both in NYC. They do NOT want Bonds to get #70 or #71 off them. Last week, when the Giants were in L.A., the Commissioner asked the Dodgers if they would stop the game if Bonds got #71 off them and they said they would not. They didn’t quite show the Commish their middle fingers and they didn’t quite say, “Fuck you,” but it was definitely implied!
Ok, well, the Dodgers have no justification other than being jerks. 
So much the better: if Barry gets #71 against the Dodgers in SF, then the Giants can stop the game, have a parade with elephants and clowns, bring in the mayor to make a speech, and present Barry with the key to the freakin’ city. Hee hee…
Actually, if the Giants keep winning and the Astros keep losing, they could possibly get knocked out of the wild card race and replaced by the Giants. So the Astros have good reason not to let the Giants’ best guy beat them. (Or are the Giants mathmatically eliminated already?)
I suppose one could say that Houston and St. Louis are both tied for the Central Division AND for the Wild Card. Whoever the WC leader is, the Giants are 4 games behind them.
(It’s amazing: Only five games left in the season and we still don’t know who the N.L. division winners are! Six teams are competing for four playoff spots. I don’t recall it being like this before. What are the tiebreakers? Do they have a one-game playoff among the leaders or what?)
They do have one-game playoffs. The Giants and Cubs had a playoff for the wild card spot in 1998. (Cubs won, but to everyone’s total shock, didn’t go anywhere in the postseason.)
Okay, the Giants are not mathematically eliminated. They are two games back of both the Cardinals (in the wild card) and the DBacks (in the NL West). The WC race is all in a confusion, because the Cards, Astros, and Giants are all so close to each other. Plus, the Cards and Astros play each other in their last series - who knows what will happen? As for the NL West race, get this: since September 7, the Giants and DBacks have had the exact same results when both teams played, ie, when the Giants win, the DBacks win. When the Giants lose, so do the DBacks. No ground has been gained or lost in nearly a month. How bizarre is that? This was discussed during the Giants/Astros game tonight; I had thought I was just imagining this phenomenon.
As for Barry, Larry Dierker is the world’s biggest wuss! Glad to see that his “strategy” failed miserably - every time he walked Barry, Kent got a hit, and the Giants kicked Astro ass. Giants broadcaster Mike Krukow was practically apoplectic over Dierker’s disregard for the Unwritten Rules of Baseball (one of the many, many, many topics on which Krukow is an expert).
There will not be a one-game playoff this year because the schedule’s already been pushed back a week. In case of an Astro-Cards tie, whoever won more games in the season series between those two teams gets the NLC division. If that’s tied, whoever has a better record vs the NLC (I think). It was all broken down in the St. Louis Pos-Dispatch arlier this week, so I’m just going by memory, but there will not be a playoff game in case of a tie this year.
I actually recorded this game and watched it just now. (I don’t care about baseball too much, but this was just too big to ignore.)
I was rewarded with the dual spectacle of 1. Barry Bonds shattering the record for most walks in a season…172 and counting…and 2. practically the entire Giants team making absolute meat of the Astros’ pitching.
Quite a game, especially with so much at stake.
(C’mon, a 78 year old record held by Babe Ruth! Isn’t that worth something?)
Bonds hit number 70 after being walked 8 times in the series.
I guess the good news is that the Cardinals are now in sole possession of 1st place in the NL Central, one game ahead of Houston going into the last series (against Houston, no less).
Maybe the Dodgers won’t give him anything and he ends up tied with McGwire. That wouldn’t be so bad.
He applies the “jerk” label again. But the only justification he can come up with over Bonds’s entire career is a court battle with his wife over child support payments, and missing two team photos.
I just wish one of these guys would for once provide some sort of evidence that Bonds is an evil person. Sheesh. Just one rat in a box, spitting on an umpire, punching a heckler, tossing a firecracker at a kid, bigoted comment, or playing cards in the clubhouse would suffice.
I’m more and more convinced that keeping to himself and not playing nicey-nice with sportswriters is his grave sin.
Also, here’s a nice article on slate addressing the clutch hitting nonsense we hear about ad naseum:
The guy is just amazing.
The Astros walked him 8 times in 3 games (I would imagine the “p”-word was being used a lot in the Giants dugout. Best thing I saw all week–Bonds’ daughters holding up a sign saying “please pitch to my daddy.”). I believe he was challenged exactly once–by Billy Wagner on Tuesday (grounded out). So after seeing nothing but junk since last Saturday, he steps in against a flamethrowing rookie. First pitch: 95 mph, Bonds swings & misses. Makes a slight re-calibration (Bonds quote: “he was throwing a bit harder than he was warming up.”), takes one under the chin, and then sends the next one 450 feet.
I am in awe.
Tell you what Crunchy. Here’s a win/win situation. Your Cardinals sweep the Astros. The Giants sweep the Dodgers (without a Bonds homerun). Everybody is happy (I don’t know a single Giants fan who would rather have Bonds break the record than have the Giants make the playoffs) and the Giants and Cardinals meet in the first round of the playoffs. Of course, all of the above AND a Bonds homerun (or two) would just be icing on the cake 
Bonds is a good guy, he just doesn’t like the press and thinks he is the best player on his team and behaves that way too, to the sometimes irritation of his teammates. He has grown up in the spotlight (being Bobby’s son), so he learned early to keep some distance from people who want a piece of him for their own purposes. On the other hand, he is not a super nice guy and affable like Mark McGwire, but people are different.
[hijack]
When Rickey Henderson broke the record for the most stolen bases in a career, his accomplishment was overshadowed by Nolan Ryan pitching his seventh no-hitter on the same day.
It seems only fitting that Henderson would break Ty Cobb’s record for most runs scored in a career on the same day Bonds hits #70 and gets overshadowed once again.
I get the feeling Henderson will get his 3,000th hit the same day Bonds gets #71!
I was at the game in San Diego yesterday when Henderson did it. You don’t get to see significant baseball history made in front of your eyes in every game. I won’t throw away THAT ticket stub!
[/hijack]
jab1 - Henderson being “overshadowed” by Ryan was nothing more than vile prejudice. I was thorougly disgusted by how some astonishingly ignorant media outlets (and it wasn’t everyone, let me remind you) feebly attempted to downplay his remarkable achievemnt, simply because he wasn’t media-friendly or personable or whatever. (I’d blame it on racism, except that there doesn’t seem to be any racism in baseball, just a titanic morass of “unwritten rules”.)
That said, Henderson still needs one more run to break the record, and chances are he’ll get it before anyone hits #71. So there’s still a chance.
zuma - Here: http://cnnsi.com/inside_game/magazine/life_of_reilly/news/2001/08/21/life_of_reilly/
Not in the same league as Albert Belle or Bud Selig, but there is a reason people don’t like him.
everyone - Here’s the one thing I can’t understand. WHY is breaking a 78 year old record held by Babe Ruth somehow not important? (Note also that in the first Astros game, Bonds scored off of all his walks.) I mean, my god, they’re acting like this happens every month. Mark McGwire, the man who shattered the home run record, never came close to the walks record. And we’re left with sportscasters (including Chris Berman, in one of the most unforgivable blunders of his career) pretending that the walks record somehow doesn’t matter. Sheesh.
Bzzt. Sorry. The NL record of 162 walks was set by McGwire in 1998. Bonds zipped by it last week. (When Barry broke Ruth’s record, the Giants’ Jon Miller noted it and said sarcastically that the media entourage could leave, as Barry had broken the record everyone came to see broken.)
Apparently, HR records and BB records tend to occur simultaneously. Not a coincidence, I suppose, and makes one wonder how many HR’s either player would get/have gotten if pitchers were more compelled to throw strikes.
It seems Larry Dierker didn’t care how many times Barry scored on a hit by Jeff Kent, just so long as he didn’t go deep. Whadda jerk. It would be nice if, when the summary of the season is written, it can be said that the Astros blew their chance at a pennant through a stubborn refusal to throw strikes to Bonds, in defiance of any baseball logic.
No, he broke it last night, the same night Bonds hit #70.
You’re right! It’s EASY to pitch no-hitters. A pitcher who doesn’t throw at least one no-hitter per season just isn’t trying!
IMHO, pitching 7 no-hitters in a career is just as remarkable an achievement as hitting 755 homers or getting 4,256 hits or 2,246 runs or…
You get the idea.
Wrong. He broke it yesterday against the Dodgers. And, as I said above, I was there.