Sports Views

Don't get me wrong, I'm not becoming a Bonds apologist, but watching him is like watching an old dog try to do all the things he used to.

But, this last week, after seeing Barry Bonds come back on his homer-a-day chase — fueled in part by whatever animus he has against Babe Ruth, and perhaps hoping to pass him this year, and perhaps fueled in part in other ways — I got to wondering.

Dan thinks that Baltimore fans have so much more integrity because they booed Rafael Palmiero. All I can say is that Rafael Palmiero is no Barry Bonds. I’ve been watching the guy for, what, 13 years now and in all my life, I’ve never seen another player (even before he got big) whose swing, his presence, changes an entire game. Here’s a guy who hasn’t played in a year, no spring training, no nothing, and the pitchers are still afraid to pitch to him, and with good reason.

Let’s look at offensive winning percentage (OWP) to see why this is true. It is a stat developed by Bill James that tells us the winning percentage a team would have with 9 identical hitters if the team allowed the league average number runs per game. Giambi’s OWP’s in both 2000 (.832) and 2001 (.846) are both in the top 100 of all time (actually they are both in the top 84). How many players in baseball history have had back to back seasons with an .800+ OWP? Not many, just 23. And all of them are in the Hall of Fame except Giambi, Barry Bonds, Joe Jackson and Pete Browning (one of the best hitters of the 19th century who probably deserves to be in the Hall). Since I am using data from the Lee Sinins Sabermetric Encyclopedia, OWP is also adjusted for park effects.

He might have a point, but the guy is so combative that it’s hard to feel any sort of sympathy for him. It’s like reading articles defending how Barry Bonds is really a nice guy deep down inside his otherwise childlike and troubled soul. Whatever. He’s still on my all-pity team, the guys that look at themselves as martyrs or victims of some media or league or fan conspiracy. Inaugural members of this group across all sports include: Gary Sheffield, Barry Bonds, Jose Canseco, Carl Everett, Terrell Owens, Allen Iverson, Karl Malone, and Alexei Yashin (had to throw in a hockey guy). Can’t forget John McEnroe or Ted Williams.

I absolutely love baseball. Can’t think of a better way to spend an afternoon or evening than munching on fatty snacks, surrounded by thousands of happy fans out for a day at the park. (I think I have this rosy view because I’ve never been to Fenway or Yankee Stadium, and I think I’ll keep it that way. I hear the fans are of a different breed.) And I love baseball for the same reason I also love college basketball and soccer: it is truly a team sport. Yeah you have your homerun hitters, and that’s fun to watch, but you can’t win with only homerun hitters (e.g., San Francisco Giants and Barry Bonds).

A post on Baseball Musings updates us on Barry Bonds' knee situation and asks how long will he play and/or will he break Hank Aaron's HR record?

“I don’t sign for white people.”

A quote attributed to Barry Bonds in a new book by former baseball player Ron Kittle.

Of course this is no absolute. Some players will underperform their huge contracts while others will out perform their smaller contracts. That’s why a team like Arizona can win only 51 games, 3 more than replacement level, and spend 22 million for each of those three wins. Also if you look at Barry Bonds $18 million salary in 2004 he’s worth it because he contributed 18 wins above the marginal level by himself (according to win shares).

Injured San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds, at the center of an offseason-but-still-simmering steroids scandal, provided a urine specimen to a Major League Baseball lab technician Wednesday as part of the league’s random testing for performance-enhancing drugs, according to ESPN. Several of Bonds’ teammates also submitted to the required testing.

Funny, when Barry Bonds started breathing down Babe Ruth’s neck, speculation over the former’s use of illegal substances ran rampant. But as Craig Biggio’s assault on Don Baylor’s HBP mark continues, media and fans alike turn a blind eye. More on the subject (sort of) from the Tacoma Tribune’s Larry Larue.

And, I'm sorry if you're a Barry Bonds fan and think he was clean, but come on! Get with reality. He was juiced and gets paid a gazillion dollars. What's sad is that the guy had loads of natural talent and would have had a great career without it. I'm also not buying the native Spanish speaking athletes who say that, because their grasp of English isn't perfect, they weren't aware that what they were doing was wrong.

I love Star Trek, my Jeep (does everyone own one here?), Ham Radio and Baseball. I do not like hanging drywall, Microsoft, Barry Bonds and broccoli. My current passion is Nomad Gamer and the hope that one day it will actually make enough money to buy a happy meal.

Colin Cowie is a renowned event planner, and his company Colin Cowie Lifestyle is regarded as one of the premier event design and production companies in the world. He has produced weddings, parties and charity events around the globe. His celebrity weddings include those of Jerry Seinfeld, Kelsey Grammer, Lisa Kudrow, Jenny McCarthy, Sela Ward, Sugar Ray Leonard and Barry Bonds, among others. Renowned parties include Oprah Winfrey’s 50th birthday celebration, birthday celebrations for John Travolta and Quincy Jones, the grand opening...

"A John Paul II trading card has sold for $8,100, says a Beckett Media guide. The late pope outdid Barry Bonds, whose cards haven't exceeded $1,200."

While Barry Bonds continues to rehabilitate his troublesome left knee, Major League Baseball is conducting its own investigation into the troubled slugger, major league sources told the Daily News.

I don’t know how the rest of you are coping with the realization that not everything we read on Barry Bonds’ website is 100% accurate, but the unsentimental Neil Hayes of the Contra Costa Times has come to the grim conclusion that the Sultan Of Surly is going, going gone.

Now there's the steroid scandal on top of everything. I'm most upset that Barry Bonds may have used steroids, or, if not steroids, some other kind of "performance-enhancing drugs." When I lived in San Francisco, I went to some Giants games and got to see a lot of Bonds. I have never seen a more exciting player to watch. You couldn't keep your eyes off him when he was on the field. Those moments when he connected on a home run and just stood there for a moment, watching the ball go... I feel so disappointed that everything Bonds has done may be overshadowed by his drug use.

And yet, despite everything, I still open my newspaper to the sports section first.

I often ask myself, "why"?

And then, the other day, I found a quote from Earl Warren that summarized it perfectly:

I always turn to the sports pages first, which record peoples' accomplishments. The front page is nothing but man's failures.

Last summer I went to a Giants game in San Francisco with [my uncle] and met Barry Bonds. He was much nicer in person than I read. My dad taped the baseball steroid scandal on cable and one night we watched it while we talked about my essay and my uncle said that if bloggers were different than their blogs then they were like Barry Bonds was. So I decided to write about how bloggers are different on blogs than they are in emails about the war, just like Barry Bonds is different in person than you read about being nasty. Although it was my uncle's...

Baseball, for example, is rife with inequality. Greedy players like Barry Bonds are hitting more than their fair share of home runs. Clearly it's bad for the game when a small number of players selfishly grab up so many of the available home runs, because it leaves less for all of the other players to hit. The best thing for the game is to have everyone hitting at least a couple of the homers, and nobody hitting too many of them: a large "middle class" of mediocre power hitters is what should dominate baseball. But how to best achieve a more equitable...