The Legend of Barry Bonds

You're cocky, arrogant, arguably one of the most talented athletes of your era, your freaking god father is Willie "Say Hey" Mays, yet you still thought you had to take performance enhancing drugs to make yourself better?

What were you trying to live up to? Did you think you had to be a better player than your dad?

Bobby Bonds, played for 13 seasons, career stats: .268 avg, .471 slug, 332 HR, 1024 rbi's, 461 SB. Never was higher than 3rd in MVP voting and was a 3 time all-star. His most impressive season was either when he was 24 (.302/.504/26/78/48) or when he was 25 (.288/.512/33/102/26).

I think it's pretty fair to say you could have surpassed those numbers without taking steroids.

Was it the '90/'91/'92 seasons? Did the loss push you over the edge? Did you make the decision in your mind that you would win a championship at ANY cost?

The 1990 Pittsburgh Pirates lost to the Cincinnati Reds 4-2 who eventually went on to sweep the Athletics 4-0 to win the '90 WS. In 1991 the Pirates were up 3-2 in the NLCS with two games left in Three Rivers Stadium. They lost game 6 in the top of the ninth inning when Doug Drabek gave up a double for one run; game 7 was lost 4-0. In 1992 the Braves were up 3-1 in the NLCS, Pittsburgh won the next two games in dominant fashion to take them to game 7 for the 2nd consecutive year. Pittsburgh was up 2-0 entering the ninth with Doug Drabek pitching, Atlanta would score 3 to win the pennant.

I think anyone who just read that blurb has to have a lot of respect for Doug Drabek not going down Donnie Moore lane. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donnie_Moore )

GETTING TO THE POINT...

If you look at Barry Bonds statistics, they are unbelievable. By the time he was 32 (11 seasons) he had: hit over .300 5 times, stolen over 30 bases 9 times, won 7 silver slugger awards, hit over 30 HR's 7 times, hit over 40 HR's 3 times, hit over 100 RBI's 7 times, his career OPS was 182 for god-sakes.

Over, what should have been, his seven most-productive seasons (age 25-32) he AVERAGED .305, 36 HR's, 109 RBI's, 38 SB's a season. OVER SEVEN SEASONS he almost averaged a 40/40 season. For those of you who don't know baseball, that is unheard of. The ridiculous thing is if it wasn't for an injury-plagued 1994 season, it would have been even better.

But none of this matters, because of 1998.

In 1998, Barry Bonds was 33. He had an amazing year: .303/.609/37 HR/122 RBI's/28 SB's. However, no one seemed to care. Sosa and McGwire were the center of attention on their race to top Maris. Bonds would get 8th in MVP voting, despite having a higher OPS and SB than two of the players above him. That whole off-season began a downward turn for his career. In 1999 Barry was injured and missed about 50 games which further led to his dependence on the drugs to help him recover from injuries.

In 1999 an interesting thing happened, Barry's stolen bases declined RAPIDLY. That kind of stat kind of smacks me in the head because it tells me that his age is catching up with him and he lost some of his athleticism.

The year 2000 would start five consecutive years of 40+ HR seasons, something he had only done 3 times previously in his whole career.

In 2001 Barry would win his first MVP since 1993 at 36 years old. During this season his batting average was .328 and it wouldn't dip below this number for four more seasons.

2002 Barry won the MVP again, carried his team to the World Series and lost in seven games (AGAIN) to the Anaheim Angels.

2003-2004 Barry won two more MVP's boosting his career OPS another 20-30 points on the way. He's never been the same since the 2004 season because he stopped taking supplements.

Just in the past hour, while writing this post, I've went through four or five different emotions: amazement, jealousy, pity, embarassment and hatred. I suppose I feel sorry for Barry Bonds being as he is now the name that we all associate with steroids. Even though I don't condone what Barry did, we should really blame Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa for bringing the steroid era to baseball.

They changed baseball into a game of home runs, they changed what fans wanted every time they walked into a park. Maybe the real culprits are ourselves for falling into a trance of only enjoying long balls instead of a lead off hitter who's OBP is over .420 and scores 140 runs.

Barry was an actor in the show. A show that we paid for. He could have been a Hall of Famer known for being one of the best combinations of speed and power to ever play the game. Instead, he is now known for being the face of steroids and for a symbol that will forever haunt his stats.

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