Barry Bonds
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| Barry Bonds | |
|---|---|
| File:Beiserebatedor.jpg | |
| San Francisco Giants – No. 25 | |
| Left field | |
Bats: Left Throws: Left | |
| debut | |
| May 30, 1986, for the Pittsburgh Pirates | |
| Career statistics (through 2005) | |
| Home runs | 708 |
| Stolen bases | 506 |
| Slugging average | .611 |
| Stats at Baseball Reference | |
| Former teams | |
Barry Lamar Bonds* (born July 24 1964 in Riverside, California) is a left fielder in Major League Baseball for the San Francisco Giants; he is most famous for his home run hitting, and is notorious for his alleged involvement with performance enhancing drugs. He holds the record for most home runs in a single season with 73 and is currently third on the all-time career list with 708, trailing only Babe Ruth (714) and Hank Aaron (755).
Bonds is generally considered to be among the greatest players of all time, and has won a record seven MVP awards over the course of his career; for those who view baseball through the prism of sabermetrics, Bonds, along with Babe Ruth and Ted Williams, is typically regarded as one of the top three hitters in the history of the game. He is the only player in baseball history to have hit at least 500 home runs and stolen at least 500 bases (no other player has reached even 400-400). Additionally, Bonds has won eight Gold Glove Awards for his defensive prowess in left field. However, he is the focus of a raging debate in the baseball world, centering on two questions: has he had help in the form of illegal performance-improving drugs, and if so, to what degree, if any, does the use of these drugs account for his accomplishments? This debate has been further fueled by reports of testimony given in the investigation of the BALCO scandal. In March 2006, Sports Illustrated published an excerpt from Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru Wada's conspiracy theory book "Game of Shadows", alleging that Bonds has used steroids frequently since 1998. On March 30, 2006, baseball commissioner Bud Selig announced that a probe of steroid use would be headed by former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, focusing on only steroid use since 2002, when MLB banned performance-enhancing drugs.
Background
The son of former All-Star Bobby Bonds, Barry Bonds graduated in 1983 from Junipero Serra High School (San Mateo, Calif.), excelling in baseball, basketball and football. Although Barry was originally drafted by the San Francisco Giants (the team with which he would later star), Bonds chose to go to college first, playing baseball at Arizona State University and earning a degree in Criminology. He began his major league career in 1986 with the Pittsburgh Pirates, who selected him with the 6th overall pick in the 1985 draft. In 1993, Bonds left the Pirates to sign a lucrative free agent contract (worth a then-record $43.75 million over six years) with the Giants, for whom his father had played over the first seven years of his career.
Bonds' uncanny combination of speed and power in the early and middle stages of his career recalled his father's abilities, though it is generally held that Barry is an even more talented player than Bobby was. In addition to his famous father, Bonds has an outstanding athletic pedigree: Baseball Hall of Famer Willie Mays is his godfather; Reggie Jackson, another Hall of Famer, is his distant cousin. His aunt, Rosie Bonds, finished 8th in the Women's 80-meter hurdles (Extended to 100-meter hurdles in 1971) at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan.
Achievements
In Sports Illustrated (June 5, 2000), San Francisco Giant Shawon Dunston said of his teammate Bonds, "He's not going to hit 70 homers, but he believes he can. That's frightening." The next year, Bonds set the single-season home run record, hitting 73 to break Mark McGwire's 70-homer mark set in 1998. Some analysts consider Bonds' 2001 performance among the greatest hitting seasons in history; besides the home run record, he set single-season marks for walks (177) and slugging percentage (.863) (topping Ruth's records of 170 and .847, set in 1923 and 1920, respectively). In 2002, Bonds did not repeat his 73-homer feat, belting only 46 long balls (still good enough for second place in the National League), but there were mitigating circumstances, mainly the fact that teams were willing to walk him rather than give him good pitches to hit. Partly because pitchers tried to "pitch around" him whenever possible, he bettered his own record for walks with 198, which contributed greatly to a .582 on-base percentage, breaking Ted Williams' 1941 record of .551. He also won the National League batting title with a .370 average, becoming the oldest player to win the honor for the first time. In 2004, he won his second batting title with a .362 average. He also broke two of his own records: OPS, with 1.422, and on-base percentage, with a staggering .609 mark -- the only time a player has bettered .600 over a full season. He also slugged .812, only the second time in history that some has bettered .800 twice. Babe Ruth was the other, with .847 and .846 in 1920 and 1921, respectivly.
Bonds has been voted the National League's Most Valuable Player a record seven times: in 1990, 1992, 1993, 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004. He is the first player in baseball history to be named MVP in three (much less four) consecutive years, and no other player has won the award more than three times. He also finished second in the voting for the award on two occasions: in 1991, to Terry Pendleton of the Atlanta Braves; and in 2000, to then-teammate Jeff Kent. During the 2002 season, Bonds became the fourth man to hit 600 career home runs, and he also set the record for most home runs hit in a single post-season (8). The Giants lost the World Series that year to the Anaheim Angels, four games to three.
Bonds' 8 Gold Glove awards as an outfielder are the third-most ever for that position. He has been named to 13 National League All-Star teams, in 1990, 1992-1998, and 2000-2004.
Bonds became the first 400-400 player (400 home runs and 400 stolen bases) on August 23, 1998, when he hit home run number 400 off of Florida's Kirt Ojala. He had stolen his 400th base on July 26, 1997 against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Candlestick Park. On June 23 2003, Bonds recorded his 500th stolen base in the eleventh inning of a game against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Pacific Bell Park. Bonds later scored the winning run. By chance, his ailing father Bobby was in attendance that night. With 633 career home runs at the time, Bonds became the first 500-500 player in baseball history, already the only member of the 400-400 club. Additionally, in 1996 Bonds became the second of the three current members of the so-called "40-40 club", signifying 40 home runs and 40 stolen bases in one season. The other two members are José Canseco and Alex Rodriguez.
Bonds is among the many power hitters of recent vintage who "crowd the plate", standing in such a way that his body is almost over the plate (and thus closer to the strike zone, allowing his bat to cover more of the plate when he swings). In 2001, because of Bonds and others like Mo Vaughn (each of whom wear large padded elbow protectors when batting), Major League Baseball instructed umpires to call a slightly different strike zone, calling more high inside pitches strikes. The new regulations also banned hitters from using hard protective gear apart from helmets (e.g., hard elbow or chest guards), which enabled them to get closer to the plate. MLB officials ruled, however, that Bonds could continue to sport his own particular elbow guard, due to medical reasons.
On April 12, 2004, Bonds hit his 660th home run, tying him with his godfather Willie Mays for 3rd on the all-time career home run list in a game against the Milwaukee Brewers at SBC Park. Larry Ellison (not the CEO of Oracle Corporation) caught the home run and returned it to Barry. He hit his 661st home run at the same venue the next day, April 13, placing him in outright third behind Babe Ruth (714) and Hank Aaron (755). Ellison also caught number 661, but kept it for himself with Barry's blessing. (Ellison was in a kayak in McCovey Cove, an arm of San Francisco Bay that lies behind the right-field stands at SBC Park, so this wasn't quite the amazing coincidence it appears at first sight.)
On July 4, 2004, Bonds passed Rickey Henderson to take the all-time lead in career walks, drawing his 2191st free pass. Later in 2004, he broke his own single-season record for walks, becoming the first player with over 200 in a season and ending the season with 232. His total of 232 walks was 105 more than the next closest leader, Lance Berkman, Todd Helton, and Bobby Abreu who all had 127. Included in Bonds' 2004 total were 120 intentional walks, the most issued since MLB began recording them separately in 1954.
Bonds also has the 2nd- and 3rd-highest single-season intentional walk totals, with 68 in 2002 and 61 in 2003. He has been the league leader in the category for 13 of the past 14 seasons. Oddly, though, he did not lead in 2001, when he hit a record 73 home runs, finishing with 35. Sammy Sosa led the NL with 37.
Bonds holds almost every major league record in existence for intentional walks: four in a nine-inning game (2004), 120 in a season (2004) and 604 in his career (more than the next two players on the all-time list, Hank Aaron and Willie McCovey, combined). Bonds is an easy candidate for the intentional walk, though some have argued that his opponents' obsession with pitching around him borders on the irrational. Still, the Giants have afforded Bonds little in the way of lineup "protection" in recent years, making the incentive to issue him a free pass even greater. In the first month of the 2004 season, Bonds drew 43 walks, 22 of them intentional. He broke his previous record of 68 intentional walks, set in 2002, on July 10, 2004 in his last appearance before the All-Star break. On May 28, 1998, Bonds became one of only four players in major league history to be intentionally walked with the bases loaded, when the Arizona Diamondbacks elected to give up a run and face catcher Brent Mayne instead.
On September 17, 2004, Bonds hit his 700th home run off San Diego Padres pitcher Jake Peavy in San Francisco and became only the third man to achieve the 700 home run plateau.
Resurgence
In 1999, with only statistics through 1997 being considered, Bonds ranked Number 34 on The Sporting News' list of the 100 Greatest Baseball Players, making him the highest-ranking active player (next-best was Greg Maddux at Number 39), while Ken Griffey Jr. came in at Number 93. When the Sporting News list was redone in 2005, Bonds jumped up 28 spaces to Number 6 All Time, behind only Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Ty Cobb, Walter Johnson, and Hank Aaron. However, while Bonds was nominated as a finalist for the Major League Baseball All-Century Team that year, Griffey was actually elected to it, probably due to being more popular and respected than Bonds, rather than more impressive on the field. That same year, baseball historian and sabermetrician Bill James wrote of Bonds, "Certainly the most un-appreciated superstar of my lifetime... Griffey has always been more popular, but Bonds has been a far, far greater player." As of 1999, James rated Bonds as the 16th best player of all time, even though his career was far from complete. "When people begin to take in all of his accomplishments," James predicted, "Bonds may well be rated among the five greatest players in the history of the game."
Throughout the decade of the 1990s, Bonds was an exceptionally patient hitter and a great slugger who stole bases and played Gold Glove defense. Bill James ranked Bonds as the best player of the 1990s, noting that his selection for the 1990s' 2nd-best player (Craig Biggio) had been closer in production to the decade's 10th-best player than he was to Bonds.
By the year 2000 Bonds was regarded as a surefire Hall of Famer, but it was in the beginning of the next millennium -- at the age of 37 -- when Bonds would surpass his peers and reach a level of offensive production that only a select few in the history of the game have achieved. This level of accomplishment would also tar Bonds with a negative notoriety, however, when baseball's "Steroid Era" received a retroactive hostility. A vocal minority now argue that baseball players alleged to have used steroids should be rejected for the sport's Hall of Fame.
2005 injury problems
On March 22, 2005, Bonds announced that he could be sidelined for the rest of the 2005 season because of surgery on his knee. At the press conference, Bonds also indicated that he was frustrated by the focus on his alleged steroid use and the negative portrayal of him in the media. Later, Bonds sounded positive about his rehabilitation and told fans at the Opening Day festivities, "I will be back!" The chances of Bonds' return to the playing field were covered relentlessly throughout the summer by ESPN, in anticipation of potentially unprecedented scrutiny by the media and baseball fans (baseball had toughened its steroid-testing program since Bonds had last played). On May 4, Bonds revealed on his website that he had undergone a third arthroscopic knee surgery because of a bacterial infection in his knee. This setback led many to assume that Bonds would not play in the 2005 season, and in the process raised much speculation as to whether Hank Aaron's career home run record of 755 would ultimately be out of Bonds' reach.
On August 1, in an interview with MLB.com, Bonds stated that he would most likely not return before the end of the 2005 season, due to continued buildup of fluid in the knee. On August 5, though, he stated on his website that while he was unsure of his status, he remained optimistic. In September, Bonds started working out with the team while they were in Los Angeles to play the Dodgers. On September 10, the Giants announced that Bonds would be activated on September 12. He was indeed activated that day, and immediately returned to being a starter in left field. In his return against the San Diego Padres, he nearly hit a home run in his first at-bat, but the ball was ruled to be only a double due to fan interference. Bonds finished the night 1-for-4 with a double. Upon his return, Bonds mostly continued his pre-injury dominance at the plate, hitting home runs in four consecutive games from September 18 to September 21 and finishing with five in only 14 games.
2006 season his last?
On February 19, 2006, Bonds announced in an interview with USA Today that he plans on retiring at the conclusion of the 2006 season, with or without the all-time home run record. ""I've never cared about records anyway," Bonds said, "so what difference does it make? I'm not playing baseball anymore after this. The game (isn't) fun anymore. I'm tired of all of the crap going on. I want to play this year out, hopefully win, and once the season is over, go home and be with my family. Maybe then everybody can just forget about me." Bonds also claimed in his interview that he wasn't as athletic as he used to be.[1] However, the next day, Bonds softened his stance and said he would perhaps play in the 2007 season if his knee improved.[2] He currently stands at 708 home runs; to break Hank Aaron's record, he will have to hit 48 more career home runs, a total he has reached only twice.
On March 9, 2006, after his first game of the preseason with the San Francisco Giants, Bonds said that he would know around the All-Star Break and in a time period ranging from July to August 2006, whether or not he would be returning for the 2007 MLB season.
Career statistics (as of September 29, 2005)
Year Ag Tm Lg G AB R H 2B 3B HR RBI SB CS BB SO BA OBP SLG TB SH SF IBB HBP GDP +---+--+---+--++---++---+---+---+--+--+--+---+--+--+---+---+----+----+----+---+--+--+---+---+---+ 1986 22 PIT NL 113 413 72 92 26 3 16 48 36 7 65 102 .223 .330 .416 172 2 2 2 2 4 1987 23 PIT NL 150 551 99 144 34 9 25 59 32 10 54 88 .261 .329 .492 271 0 3 3 3 4 1988 24 PIT NL 144 538 97 152 30 5 24 58 17 11 72 82 .283 .368 .491 264 0 2 14 2 3 1989 25 PIT NL 159 580 96 144 34 6 19 58 32 10 93 93 .248 .351 .426 247 1 4 22 1 9 1990 26 PIT NL 151 519 104 156 32 3 33 114 52 13 93 83 .301 .406 .565 293 0 6 15 3 8 1991 27 PIT NL 153 510 95 149 28 5 25 116 43 13 107 73 .292 .410 .514 262 0 13 25 4 8 1992 28 PIT NL 140 473 109 147 36 5 34 103 39 8 127 69 .311 .456 .624 295 0 7 32 5 9 1993 29 SFG NL 159 539 129 181 38 4 46 123 29 12 126 79 .336 .458 .677 365 0 7 43 2 11 1994 30 SFG NL 112 391 89 122 18 1 37 81 29 9 74 43 .312 .426 .647 253 0 3 18 6 3 1995 31 SFG NL 144 506 109 149 30 7 33 104 31 10 120 83 .294 .431 .577 292 0 4 22 5 12 1996 32 SFG NL 158 517 122 159 27 3 42 129 40 7 151 76 .308 .461 .615 318 0 6 30 1 11 1997 33 SFG NL 159 532 123 155 26 5 40 101 37 8 145 87 .291 .446 .585 311 0 5 34 8 13 1998 34 SFG NL 156 552 120 167 44 7 37 122 28 12 130 92 .303 .438 .609 336 1 6 29 8 15 1999 35 SFG NL 102 355 91 93 20 2 34 83 15 2 73 62 .262 .389 .617 219 0 3 9 3 6 2000 36 SFG NL 143 480 129 147 28 4 49 106 11 3 117 77 .306 .440 .688 330 0 7 22 3 6 2001 37 SFG NL 153 476 129 156 32 2 73 137 13 3 177 93 .328 .515 .863 411 0 2 35 9 5 2002 38 SFG NL 143 403 117 149 31 2 46 110 9 2 198 47 .370 .582 .799 322 0 2 68 9 4 2003 39 SFG NL 130 390 111 133 22 1 45 90 7 0 148 58 .341 .529 .749 292 0 2 61 10 7 2004 40 SFG NL 147 373 129 135 27 3 45 101 6 1 232 41 .362 .609 .812 303 0 3 120 9 5 2005 41 SFG NL 14 42 8 12 1 0 5 10 0 0 9 6 .286 .404 .667 28 0 1 3 0 0 +---+--+---+--++---++---+---+---+--+--+--+---+--+--+---+---+----+----+----+---+--+--+---+---+---+
The BALCO scandal
In 2003, Bonds became embroiled in a scandal when Greg Anderson of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative, Bonds' trainer since 2000, was indicted by a federal grand jury and charged with supplying anabolic steroids to athletes, including a number of baseball players. This led to speculation that Bonds had used performance-enhancing drugs during a time when there was no mandatory testing in Major League Baseball. Bonds declared his innocence, attributing his changed physique and increased power to a strict regimen of bodybuilding and legitimate dietary supplements.
During grand jury testimony on December 4, 2003 — which was obtained through unknown means by the San Francisco Chronicle and published almost a year later, on December 3, 2004 [3] — Bonds said Anderson gave him a rubbing balm and a liquid substance he called "the cream" and "the clear". BALCO founder Victor Conte had identified "the clear" as the designer steroid THG, and prosecutors contended "the cream" was a testosterone-based ointment. Bonds said that at the time he did not believe them to be steroids. Bonds would later defend himself saying he "unwillingly" used steroids.
In August 2005, all four defendants in the BALCO steroid scandal trial, including Anderson, struck deals with federal prosecutors that did not require them to reveal names of athletes who may have used banned drugs.
Many baseball pundits, fans, and even players take this as evidence that Bonds has used illegal steroids. A common response to this evidence offered by Bonds supporters is the fact that he has yet to fail a league-administered drug test. However, this claim is somewhat misleading, as Major League Baseball began anonymous testing for steroids only on a sample basis in 2003 and did not begin to test all players in the league until 2004. Futhermore, there exists no test for HGH (human growth hormone), a supplement that Bonds has been accused of injecting.
On March 7, 2006, Sports Illustrated published a story indicating that Bonds had used steroids in the past. This story is based on a forthcoming book by two reporters from the San Francisco Chronicle (Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada), entitled Game of Shadows [4]. The article asserts that Bonds began using steroids in 1998 after growing jealous of the attention given to Mark McGwire (which Bonds felt was partially motivated by race). He enlisted the help of Greg Anderson, who developed an illegal regimen for Bonds. The article claims that Bonds would later be introduced to BALCO by Anderson, and would begin taking cocktails of performance enhancing drugs, including steroids, that were more powerful than what he had previously been taking. They also were supposedly undetectable. The article also mentions Bonds' mistress who claims to have evidence of Bonds threatening to kill her, and who says that the steroid use gave Bonds sexual dysfunction, as well as loss of hair, factors that may have contributed to the slugger's well-documented and often noticed boor-like mood.
Salary
Bonds re-signed with the Giants for a five-year, $90 million contract in January 2002. His salary for the 2005 season was $22 million, the second-highest salary in Major League Baseball (the highest, of course, was the $25.7 million that the Yankees' Alex Rodriguez earned).