You know, I think this excerpt is the most telling about Bonds’ character:
Emphasis mine.
Does Bonds care about appearing as a decent person in the eyes of the media? Obviously not. Is he a decent individual? I would say yes, though we’re probably never going to really know, given that (a) he doesn’t open himself up to reporters, and (b) that most of the sports media are already biased against him because he’s surly and uncommunicative.
No, it doesn’t take much to blab on to anyone with a microphone about visiting your dying father’s bedside. But I personally find it more admirable to show self-restraint than to be self-aggrandizing.
You have to admit, 49 home runs up to 73 is a little odd. Then back down to 46 the following year?
Reminds me of that one All-Star season Brady Anderson experienced back in 1996. 50 homers all of a sudden, when the previous year he hit 16? And 18 the year after?
I wouldn’t say Bonds’ stats are telling of steroid abuse. However, his physique HAS changed considerably since his Pittsburgh days, so it raises some questions. And I think those questions are fair.
Bwa ha ha ha! Gary Radnich is the biggest tool in Bay Area sports, and everyone knows it. Granted, his point still stands, but please don’t think he’s a Peter Gammons or Bob Costas. He’s not even a Razor or Mr. T.
This year for one. NL leading average, and 45 home runs with 232 walks?
Anyway, why is he obligated to go out of his way to be nice to people? Shit, he’s cheered up tens of thousands of people at once more than seven hundred times in his career. People are excited just to see him come to the plate. I was sitting in the lower box seats at Candlestick some nine or ten years ago and yelled his name; he turned and waved at me. Make my week.
Yes, it’d be nice if he were more personable in his public persona, but I don’t see how it’s his duty to do so.
Well, not to start an arguement, but steroids wouldn’t help his average nor his walks. And his average is .362 this year, .370 in 2002, and .341 in 2003.
HR’s per AT BAT which takes into account the fact that people walk the hell out of him. He’d be past Aaron already at these rates if he kept getting the same number of at bats.
Also, consider the fact that he started this tear in his late 30’s when most players are diminishing.
But the fact remains that Barry’s got no one to blame for his situation but himself. He’s a jerk because people aren’t nicer to him, and people aren’t nicer to him because he’s a jerk.
Barry could have commanded the heftiest salary in all of baseball. He could be signing 10-figure endorsement deals. More importantly, he could be inspiring kids who want to be the NEXT Barry Bonds, by being polite and accommodating. Sadly, Barry doesn’t feel like accommodating anyone but Barry, and his legacy, while impressive, will one day feel a lot more like Ty Cobb’s than Babe Ruth’s.
I am a huge Dodger fan and I love Barry Bonds. He is doing what he needs to do to be the best baseball player ever and he prioritizes that over endorsement money. Good for him. I hope he never gets a ring as long as he’s with the Giants but I love to watch him play.
[QUOTE=Chastain86]
But the fact remains that Barry’s got no one to blame for his situation but himself.
[quote]
I see him let out a bit of frustration every once in a while, but I don’t think he blames anyone. He seems perfectly comfy being more or less left alone.
He could do any of that if he wanted, but I don’t think he does. I mean, we can assume from his behavior that he pretty much wants to be left alone. What’s the best way to do that, getting your mug on a Wheaties box or distancing yourself from the media?
I’m not a baseball historian, but Ty Cobb, aside from on-field talent, is pretty much known for actively being an asshole to most who met him. Bonds just ain’t too talkative.
You seems to be chastising Barry for bitching about not getting endorsements and such, when it was his father saying he was upset in the OP. Barry doesn’t friggin’ care, and it’s silly to say he “brought upon himself” exactly what he’s after, which is being the best baseball player he can be and living a normal (though wealthy) life with his family.
There is one statistic that I find very interesting, and that is Home Run/Strikeout ratio. Over the past 3 years, Bonds’ numbers are 136/146. Considering that most power hitters also have a high number of strikeouts, those numbers are amazing. In comparison, from 1927-29 Babe Ruth had 160 Home Runs, and 236 Strikeouts. This season, if I am not mistaken, Bonds bacame the first player in MLB history to have more than 40 Home Runs and more Homers than K’s in a single season (45 HR/41 K).
Steroids might make you hit the ball harder, but I’ve never seen anyone suggest that they improve your eye-hand coordination to the point that you knock the ball out of the park more often than you swing and miss.
Furthermore, if Bonds is taking these super-steroids, how is he the only one? Someone must be selling them to him; why isn’t that person selling them to any other player? There should be at least two or three other players with similarly “inflated” stats. But there aren’t. Barry Bonds is light years ahead of every other hitter in Major League Baseball. Isn’t it just possible that the reason is not drugs, but the fact that the man is a freak of nature who apparently doesn’t care about anything else but being the best baseball player in the world?
But the only stat you mention that could relate to steriods is the Slugging %. As was said before, steriods will make you stronger, but they won’t help you hit the ball. The OBP comes from him being walked so damn much…
I think that if anything, Barry is taking something that improves his eyesight. The strikeout numbers tell the story; if the ball isn’t in the strike zone, he just plain doesn’t swing at it. And when he does swing, he makes contact. This leaves pitchers two options: walk him or throw the ball in the strike zone. If they do the latter, he hits it.
There are probably a sizeable number of Major League hitters who could put up Bonds-like numbers if they could guarantee that pitchers would only throw strikes. That’s what Bonds does. He guarantees that the ball will be in the strike zone, or he takes his free pass.
The whole idea of the game, from a pitcher’s standpoint, is to try to make the batter swing at a pitch that is out of the strike zone. If you can do that, the batter will likely miss the ball, and if the does make contact he will not get a solid hit. We see it all the time; a pitcher makes a mistake and hangs a curve ball, and the batter knocks it into the next county.
The difference is that most batters have to **hope ** that the pitcher makes a mistake. Bonds **causes ** the pitchers to make mistakes. He is perfectly willing to stand there with the bat on his shoulder until the pitcher puts one in the strike zone. Eventually he gets what he is waiting for, and takes advantage of the situation.
And the longer he keeps it up, the easier it becomes to keep going. It has gotten to the point now where opposing managers start changing their strategy three or four batters before Bonds, trying to make sure that they don’t get in a situation where he comes to the plate with runners on. I think the “Bonds factor” has made a significant contribution to the Giants’ success over the past couple of years; opposing teams spend so much effort trying to get Bonds out that they forget there are 8 other guys on the team. If they could just get a consistently good hitter to bat behind Bonds, he might hit 90 home runs.
And Suburban Plankton vaults into the ranks of most intelligent posters on baseball on this board. I think you’ve got it exactly right. Add to that that he probably works as hard as anyone in the game during the offseason on conditioning, etc., so that he’s been able to get better as he’s gotten older, instead of declining as most players do. I don’t doubt that he’s got a stong streak of selfishness and arrogance, but I also think that he knows its pointless to talk to the media about how hard he works – there’s only so many papers you can sell with stories about how Barry’s busting his ass alongside Gary Sheffield in offseason workouts, compared with what happens when you run stories attrbuting his success to steroids. There are a lot of people who have a lot at stake in believing that the only way to get those kinds of results is to cheat – it gives everyone else an easy excuse. It’s a lot harder to stomach the message that Barry’s success is the result of his own efforts – if he can do it, why can’t everyone.
Baseball’s like a lot of athletic endeavors in that players typically get by on talent early on, then learn more about how to approach the game as they get older, by which time their physical skills have started to deteriorate. Barry’s uniqueness has been to continue to refine his approach to hitting while maintaining, or even enhancing, his physical skills. The player who’s probably most comparable is Ted Williams, but Williams never worked nearly as hard on conditioning in the offseason, and eventually time caught up with him (and the effects of being away from the game for military service, injuries, etc.). They share a single-mindedness about the game that makes them hard for others to deal with. They’re similar too in their refusal to try to be something they’re not, to make nice with the reporters and fans. Neither is/was evil, as Ty Cobb seems often to have been, but both are/were concerned primarily about themselves (and in Barry’s case, his family).
An article I found six months ago in a similar debate here says that Bonds gained eighteen pounds of muscle in the 2000-2001 offseason (October to March). That’s absurd. And despite what I said in that post six months ago, it’s become increasingly hard for me to believe he hasn’t used steroids.
Bonds has a great deal of natural talent, including great bat control, reflexes, and a very good eye. That said, he never used to put up these sorts of power numbers, and he started doing it late in his career. He didn’t just develop a good eye, he’s always had that.
He was one of the greats anyway, but his increase in strength, size, and home runs was huge. He plays in a pitcher’s park, too. Even aside from what Gary Sheffield has been saying the last few days, Bonds might be doing what he’s doing without steroids, but there’s a lot of reason to think he’s probably using them.
I’ve tried twice to respond to this, spending about five minutes each time typing the most eloquent and irrefutable argument, only to have some #%$#! web-based application steal my IE window from me and delete my post before I had a chance to submit it!
I guess that’s what I get for trying to post from work.
