After thinking
about my piece from the other night on Phelps and the greatness that he missed
out on, I began thinking about other great athletes of my lifetime. I have witnessed my share of great but my
mind kept coming to one man who I didn’t mention. A man who completely dominated his respective
sport and did so with an arrogance and contempt for everyone else around
him. If you haven’t guessed it by now,
the man is Barry Bonds possibly the greatest baseball player of all time, and
the greatest sports villain I have ever seen.
Since Bonds ‘ last
season in 2007 there have been many athletes that has become the biggest
sporting villain to the public Kobe Bryant, Terrell Owens, Tiger Woods,
Lebron James to its current holder Dwight Howard among others, but in all honesty no athlete
compares to the way Barry Bonds held the title.
Look at this YouTube clip, those athletes above were reluctantly hated ,
and more often then not misunderstood people who made mistakes, Bonds on the
other hand was a bonafide jerk. He was
downright mean to people and honestly didn’t care what people thought of him. In a crazy kind of way I find this kind of
refreshing for athletes in retrospect.
He wasn’t going to suck up to the media to come off as a nice guy or
likeable person, and he gave the world a really easy person to collectively
root against.
Now along with
this Barry Bonds dominated baseball like very few people have dominated anything
ever done. From the years 1990 to 1998,
the year before Bonds’ first alleged season on steroids Barry Bonds was the
best player in baseball, baseball god Bill James said he was the best player of the 90s and the 16th best player of all time in 1999. He won 3 MVP
Awards, 8 Gold Gloves, hit 327 Homeruns, Stole 328 Bases, had a lowest on base
percentage of .410, and had a lowest WAR of 6.0, and a 2nd lowest
WAR of 7.7. He completely dominated
baseball then took steroids and completely reinvented his career putting forth between
the seasons 2001 and 2004 possibly the greatest 4 year run of a hitter in
baseball history.
2001: .328/.515/.863 BA/OBP/SLG, 73 Homeruns, .539 wOBA, 12.9 WAR
2002: .370/.582/.799 BA/OBP/SLG, 46 Homeruns, .546 wOBA, 12. 5 WAR
2003: .341/.529/.749 BA/OBP/SLG, 45 Homeruns, .506 wOBA, 10.5 WAR
2004: .362/.609/.812 BA/OBP/SLG, 45 Homeruns, .538 wOBA, 11.9 WAR
Ok for perspective since that 2001 season the highest single season WAR
is Sammy Sosa’s 2001 season of 10.4, the highest wOBA is Jason Giambi’s 2001
season where he had .466, the highest slugging is Sosa’s 2001 season where he
had.737 and the highest OBP is Jason Giambi’s 2001 season where he had an OBP
of .477. Let’s puts this is perspective
for a second no one has even come close to comparing almost any of Bonds’
numbers since that stretch he put forth.
Ok he basically broke wOBA, Fangraphs says a wOBA of .400 is excellent,
not listing one for .500 since well that seems impossible by the metric’s
standards. Even if you want to criticize
Bond’s for his steroid use over this period, which I don’t like to do, he still
was competing against players that were doing the same exact thing and were
having less success. Look every year
during this period he had an OBP over .515, meaning that when he came to bat
that he was going to be on base more than 51 percent of the time and in 2004
about 61 percent. Actually his dominance
almost bred more dominance as he walked all the time, intentionally and
unintentionally. He had an uncanny eye,
especially considering how few pitches he was given to hit over this period
that is even more impressive he retained his unparrelled patience throughout,
never changing his style.
Barry Bonds completely dominated the sport of baseball
in a way that was unique to him in my lifetime.
He did so by being the villain that sports desperately craves and
instead of shying away from the role and backing away from it he embraced it,
so thank you Barry Bonds for being the villain we needed but didn’t deserve you
were one of a kind.
Stay Hungry My Friends
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