Tuesday, July 31, 2012

A League By Himself


                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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