Bonds' reaction to hearing about 9/11

Sure, he broke baseball’s most hallowed record by pumping himself full of horse steroids that shrunk his balls to the size of peas, while embarrassing Major League pitchers repeatedly. But he ruined lives for people off the field, too. My internet buddy @qvt and I did a bit of research and we found out that Bonds did some of the most awful things you can imagine. Free feel to add your own from your personal encounters with him.

- Not only did he cheat on his wife by having a mistress, and bought said mistress a house to buy her silence, he made numerous sex tapes with her that he subsequently showed his children to teach them about sex.

- He voted for Proposition 8.

- He lied to a grand jury about taking steroids, and also tried to buy off U.S. Senators by taking them to Denny’s.

- He’s AWOL from the Army because he’s a terrorist sympathizer.

- When he sees a child’s basketball in the street, he intentionally deflates it.

- He uses the express lane at the supermarket even though he has 25 items. And they are all steroids, somehow.

- He leaves the toilet seat down even though he lives alone.

- If you lend him a book, he creases the spine while he’s reading it and then gives it back and acts like it’s normal.

- He refused a kid in the parking lot an autograph when no one else was around. And the kid was an orphan. In a wheelchair. A wheelchair with only one wheel because he was also poor.

- He pisses in the shower at the gym.

- He pushes all the buttons in the elevator while you’re in it, and then gets out and takes the stairs.

- He thinks Forrest Gump deserved to win that Oscar for Best Picture.

- He voted for the Liberal Democrats in the UK Election.

- One time he threw a perfectly good — and still wrapped — cheeseburger into the trash right in front of a homeless person because he was full already.

- He complains about having Lost spoiled by people on Twitter.

- He’s been poisoning Ken Griffey Jr. for the past decade.

- He goes to a soup kitchen not to volunteer, but to eat, because he really likes the chicken noodle soup on Thursdays at the Martin de Porres House of Hospitality.

- He drives the speed limit in the left lane of the highway.

- He celebrated each home run of his career by adopting a dog from a homeless shelter and then sacrificing it to his personal god named Oswaldo.

- He doesn’t kick over kids’ sand castles at the beach, he builds a bigger one and then doesn’t let them play with it.

- He’s the guy who scratched your Netflix DVD.

I’d say this is as good a time as any to gush about the guy who will become — if he isn’t already — the best position player the Mets have ever had.

In the 868 games he’s played, he’s racked up 143 HR, 575 RBI, and 126 SB, while hitting at a .308/.391/.517 clip. Of course, during the SNY broadcast of tonight’s game, Gary Cohen had to put Wright in company with Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio, saying that only those three New York players reached 1,000 hits in that few games with that many home runs. That’s stretching it a little bit, but Wright’s career is certainly off to an awesome start and anyone that booed him this past week deserves to have beer poured on his head.

Looking at those HR and SB totals got me thinking that Wright could possibly become a member of the 300-300 club — a club I didn’t realize included Reggie Sanders and Steve Finley until I just looked it up. Sure, it might also include Barry and Bobby Bonds, Willie Mays, and Andre Dawson, but those two other guys kinda sour it, don’t they? At least if we’re talking about Hall of Fame status. Both of them are behind even Jim Rice in career WAR!

But then I thought of another stat to add to that club: a .300 average. That eliminates all but Willie Mays (yes, Barry Bonds’ career average is only .298). If David Wright somehow manages to maintain that all-important .300 number, people will be talking about him in company with Willie Mays all the time. The Hall of Fame couldn’t be far behind.

Sure, I may be perpetuating the idea of these stupid arbitrary clubs, but even I have to admit they’re kinda fun sometimes. Everyone loves round numbers, and the beauty of a .300-300-300 club cannot be denied. I probably should have named this post after the idea because it’s so awesome.

Plugging Wright’s career stats into the quick and dirty Bill James career assessments formula, he has a 91% chance of reaching 300 HR, and a 72% chance of reaching 300 SB. I’d say the former percentage is spot-on, but even I’m not that optimistic about 300 SB. I feel like a player’s SB totals decline faster with age than his HR counts, but I forget if this has actually been proven or not. But it seems obvious, doesn’t it? Either way, the .300 average might be the toughest to end his career with.

Admittedly, the 300-300 club is going to explode in the next few years, as Alex Rodriguez, Alfonso Soriano, and Carlos Beltran are all locks. And Mike Cameron and Bobby Abreu will probably enter it as well. Even Derek Jeter has a shot. But out of all those, A-Rod and Jeter (the two Yankees, of course) are the ones who would be hitting over .300. And A-Rod isn’t a lock for that batting average milestone, since he’s signed with the Yankees for I believe the next 28 years. He’s bound to continue his decline and he’s sitting at only .305 right now.

In ten years we might be looking at a snazzy .300-300-300 club that everyone can love, and it will possibly contain Mays, A-Rod, Jeter and Wright.

Man, people will only hate New York even more once this is plastered all over ESPN. But I hope you’ll remember you heard it here first.*

*Or at least pretend that I’m actually the first person to ever say this. I did the requisite Googling and I didn’t find anything, but nothing on the internet is original.

Only two days removed from an admitted (albeit inadvertently!) steroid user being crowned the new Home Run King, along comes a guy that everyone can really look up to. If you’re any sort of baseball fan, you knew who Rick Ankiel was before he got his call up yesterday. He was a phenom lefty pitcher with a disgusting curve who was going to be the anchor of the Cardinals staff for years to come. Then he crashed and burned in the 2000 NLDS, becoming the first pitcher in a century to throw 5 wild pitches in one inning. At the time, I didn’t realize I was watching the beginning of the end for his pitching career. Nevertheless, it was more painful to watch than an episode of American Idol. Even worse was watching him get pulled in the first inning against the Mets in the NLCS. Even rooting for the Mets, I didn’t want to see the end of what promised to be an amazing career.

Well, for all intents and purposes, it really did turn out to be the end. After years of trying to get his head back on straight and his pitches in the strike zone, Ankiel decided to become a full-time outfielder. He had been a decent hitter, hitting .250 with 2 home runs his first full year in the majors as a pitcher. He was going to attempt to pull a Roy Hobbs. A knee injury last year put a hold on his outfielding career, but this year he was leading the Pacific Coast League with 32 HRs. When Scott Spiezio was quietly dumped off the roster due to having a drug problem, Ankiel was called up to fill the spot, and to provide some great PR.

Little did the world know that they would be treated to yet another moment that Hollywood would be jealous of. As Ankiel went up to bat for the first time, the St. Louis crowd stood up and gave him a rousing hometown welcome. The 20-year-old kid that wowed them 7 years ago was back, only this time he was the one looking foolish at the plate. In his first at-bat he popped up to short, and then looked completely overmatched in his next two at-bats, striking out both times. Even after that, the crowd still cheered more loudly for him than anyone else. And why not? He had seen the end of his dream and still managed to make his way back to the major leagues.

No one could’ve expected that in his fourth at-bat that he would combine Kirk Gibson’s swing and Roy Hobbs’s natural talent to hit one of the most emotional home runs that baseball has ever seen. The entire city of St. Louis must’ve been shaking. Grown men were crying and hugging in the stand. Tony LaRussa is usually the definition of subdued, but even he was running around and yelling as Ankiel rounded the bases. It’s a moment that reminds everyone why baseball is the greatest sport known to man, and helps us forget about the travesty that took place only a few days ago.

The past few days had been some of the most enjoyable my short life had experienced. I saw the best movie to come out this year, a friend had a 21st birthday drunken bash, and I witnessed my favorite band rock the faces off a sellout crowd at MSG. Barry Bonds destroyed all these memories…

…or not.

As a lover of the great game of baseball, am I truly supposed to be that outraged? Possibly in awe? Excited? As the Deadspin headline today said, “In The End, You Don’t Feel Nothing.” I slept through baseball history last night and as I awoke to ESPN falling over itself, all I could think about was what I was going to eat for lunch. Never would I have imagined being so indifferent to a new Home Run King being crowned. Congratulations Barry “Cream and the Clear” Bonds, you officially tarnished (Goddamn it, I was looking for a specific word, but I can’t think of it – I really need to start reading more) the greatest record in American sports. Maybe I’ll get more excited for A-Rod breaking the record in 7 or 8 years, but I’ve never gotten that caught up in records being broken. Even at 12 years old I barely gave a crap about McGwire and Sosa decimating Roger Maris’s single-season record. Maybe because even back then at such a young age I knew they were cheaters and liars. Hell, I don’t even remember caring all that much about Ripken breaking Lou Gehrig’s record. Lou Gehrig > Cal Ripken Jr. any day of the fucking week.

So now that this is finally over, ESPN has to go back to A-Rod and the Yankees and in a few years we will be seeing daily updates on A-Rod’s chase for Bonds. Maybe by then it’ll come out that A-Rod has used HGH and everyone will hate him too. I wouldn’t doubt it at this point. A significant percentage of players are no doubt still taking HGH because there’s no test for it. Why wouldn’t you take it?? Blah, now I’m actually getting riled up.

Ignorance truly is bliss.

Courtesy of Busted Tees

Every self-respecting baseball fan should. I don’t want to hear these arguments about now all of a sudden jumping on steroid users even though a few years back no one said a thing. I was younger then – and naive. And I frankly don’t truly remember what I thought back then. I don’t believe I was ever that entranced by the whole “Home Run Chase”. McGwire and Sosa both made a mockery of the record that Maris held for 40 years. They obliterated it, and it was due to them being steroid-fueled monsters. Now Bonds is making his assault on the all-time home run record.

I didn’t want to see him signed this year. For a little while there, I actually had the stupid hope of Bonds not being signed for the 2007 season. Unfortunately, the Giants are just that desperate. They gave the hobbling Bonds a $16 million contract for next year so he can look like a 60-year-old man with rheumatoid arthritis in the outfield. Hopefully one of his knees explodes.

I cringe at the thought of Bonds hitting home run number 756. Not only is he a rabid roid-head, he’s a pretty horrible human being by most accounts. He had a mistress that he intimidated into silence for a long while. His teammates hate his ass. He also has a persecution complex in which he blames everyone else for his problems. Remember that interview in which he stated, “Well, you’ve done it. You’ve brought me down. You’ve finally done it,” and then he hobbled away with his son in tow. I couldn’t contain my laughter. This is not a man worthy of breaking Hank Aaron’s record.

I can only hope that if he breaks the record, he does it to a resounding chorus of boos not seen this side of Yankee Stadium after A-Rod strikes out. Of course, if he does it in San Francisco, they’ll all eat it up. Argh.