Just like Barry, I wanted my own space

This originally was a comment for the last post, but I realize I had too much to say...

Let me begin with what I started with

Inovator, I'm saddened that you though I would want an asterisk. Saddened that you don't think I'm agreeing with you on more than half of what you've already said.

I was more upset that they hijacked PTI, that the Mets will employ a Yorvit Torrealba-Ramon Castro tandem behind the plate and that Roy Hibbert (left off your All-American list, by the way) and the No. 5 Hoyas pounded past Michigan at the Phone Booth in D.C.

My main problem was stated with gusto by Steven A. Smith on the 6 p.m. ScoreCenter.
One can't argue with the feds going after Bonds for lying. One can't deny that Bonds was on something, doing drugs he shouldn't have been, but the indicment means little to proving his guilt. It just means the Feds think they have a case and our resident lawyer can back me up.

It doesn't mean he's guilty, not yet and Ray Ratto of the Chronicle agrees.

But it's really interesting that MLB, the feds and the media only cracked down like sharks with chum in the water when he got close to Ruth, Aaron and the record.

Maybe if he was a nice guy. Maybe if as he got closer, he got smiley around the media and would give Pedro Feliz 15 mins. each night for the late ScoreCenter...

But hindsight is 20/20 and the reality is Bonds, like so many other players, pitchers and batters alike, used whatever they could to get ahead...just like every NFL player from the 60s (North Dallas Forty) until now (Shawn 'Lights Out" Merriman (sp)), just like every baseball player who popped 'reds' and 'greenies' after a long night out right before a 1 p.m. day game in the 60s, 70s, 80 and 90s.

Like it or not, we are a drug culture and have been for some time. I can remember not going to the Bird Sancutary with Jason, Jared and Sean, but I can remember my college years. Well, I can try to remember what isn't hazed in a cloud of smoke.

We take drugs for recreation. We take drugs for health (NyQuil is my personal favorite). We take drugs for the hell of it and we become addicted. As much as is made about steroids, I'm sure alcohol has derailed more careers, baseball and whatever, than a needle ever has.

They bitch about the integrity of the game, but what about Mickey Mantle playing with a hangover? What about Max Magee, God rest his soul, winning the first Super Bowl MVP still drunk from the night before? They make interesting stories now, but is thatjust because they weren't reported at the time?

Because we have the 24-7-365 news cycle and the need to fill dead air on sports talk radio, we now have all this crap.

There is the black and white elephant sitting in the corner, but there are so many things keeping this in the middle of the room, only the lazy will race to race.

I'm done for now, but since I was thinking about posting about America's obsession with O.J. and this loosly applies, check out this memorable Mos Def verse...

You can laugh and critisize Michael Jackson if you wanna,
Woody Allen molested and married his step daughter.
Same press kicking dirt on Michael's name
show Woody and Sun Yi at the playoff game (holding hands)
Now sit back and just think about that:
Would he get that same press if his name was Woody Black?
O.J. found innocent by a jury of his peers
and they've been fucking with that nigga for the last five years.
Is it fair, is it equal, is it just, is it right?
Do you do the same shit when the defendant's face is white?
- "Mr. Nigga" - Black On Both Sides

BARRY LAMAR BONDS

After I wrote my little piece on Bonds yesterday my brother Keith calls me up and asks do I really think Bonds is the greatest player of all time? Better than Ruth and Cobb and Musial and Mays and Aaron and A-Rod. And the answer is still a resounding yes. Though we didn’t have time to have a full discussion about why, one of the initial arguments my brother happened to bring up was that of Bonds batting average and where it ranks. Well as I said to him comparing eras in baseball becomes more and more difficult by the day.

The problem with comparing the different eras is all of them have inherent advantages and disadvantages. I will still argue until the day that I die that leaving Black and Hispanics out of baseball for the first 70 years of the history of the game is a way more egregious act than using steroids. Now I have gone back and forth about this with many people and the argument always comes back to this, taking steroids was a committed act and leaving Blacks and Hispanics out was an omitted act. Well I don’t necessarily agree with that, it was agreed upon by major league owners at the time that nobody would sign a Negro player, that sounds pretty deliberate to me. Now I know that the deliberate part of the act was by the owners not specifically the players, but it was still a direct act to keep a segment of the population out of the game. Plus I know how good Blacks and Hispanics have proven to be over the course of baseball history, nobody has still been able to show who took performance enhancing drugs, when they took them, and how much do they indeed help. Now I am not burying my head in the sand saying I don’t think people did them, but until someone can truly come up with a quantifiable analysis that tells me how much a certain type of steroid can help, I can’t really worry about it when comparing players.

What is my point in all of this? Well that the best way you can compare eras is looking at how people fared against their contemporaries, and in the end the cream of each generation will rise to the top.

So now we get back to what my brother was asking about, Bonds average. But my immediate comeback before I even looked it up to see where he stands amongst the collective group, I stated that in the post World War II era (the colorization of baseball) the batting averages on a whole are way down. Done are the days of a group of players hitting .330+ for a lifetime. I went back and checked it out, and indeed I am pretty smart. It took post WWII players and saw where Bonds ranked. He ranks 227th overall, but post WWII he ranks 61st. Now you might say, hey fat man, that isn’t that good, and yes it is true that Rusty Greer has a higher lifetime average, but let’s take a look inside the numbers. Ted Williams leads this generation of baseball with a .344 average, if you go down 20 points to .324 you find Joe Dimaggio ranking 9th on the list. So in a 20 point span there are only 9 players. Now take the #10 hitters, Kirby Puckett and Derek Jeter at .317 and go down only 19 points to Barry Bonds at .298 and you have 50 players in that group. So yes, while he is 61st overall he is only 19 points away from being in the top 10, in which there are a group of 50 or so players between him and the top 10.


Now this is about to be a statistician’s wet dream coming at you, so put on your thinking caps. I am going to tell you how many times Bonds finished in the Top 10 in a myriad of offensive categories, which will help prove my point. Also in the first set of parentheses I will put the first year he finished in the Top 10 in that category and the last year, so you can also see that he has accomplished these feats throughout his entire career. And lastly in the second set of parentheses you will see a number which represents how many times he finished in the top 10 of that category during “non-roid” years. According to Game of Shadows (the Holy Bible of Bonds life) the roid years are 1999-2003.


13 times Bonds has finished in the Top in the voting for NL MVP, winning 7 of them. (1990, 2004) (9)

6 times he has finished in the Top 10 in batting average, winning 2 batting titles. (1992, 2004) (3)

16 times he has finished in the Top 10 in slugging percentage, leading the league 7 times. (1988, 2007) (12)

17 times he has finished in the Top 10 in runs scored, once leading the league. (1987, 2004) (13)

17 times he has finished in the Top 10 in On Base percentage, leading the league 10 times (1988, 2007) (13)

12 times he has finished in the Top 10 in Total bases, leading the league once. (1988, 2002) (9)

5 times he has finished in the Top 10 in doubles, never leading the league. (1989, 1998) (5)

3 times he has finished in the Top 10 in triples, never leading the league. (1987, 1998) (3)

15 times he has finished in the Top 10 in the league in Homeruns, leading the league twice. (1988, 2007) (11)

10 times he has finished in the Top 10 in RBI, leading the league once. (1990, 2002) (8)

9 times he has finished in the Top 10 in stolen bases, never leading the league (1986, 1998) (9)

18 times he has finished in the Top 10 in At bats per HR, leading the league 8 times. (1988, 2007) (13)

Think about this, Bonds is 32nd on the all time steals list. If you add up the homerun totals from the number 2 guy on that list, Lou Brock, to the number 10 guy, Honus Wagner, they are still 7 homeruns short of Bonds. Of the base stealers ahead of Barry Bonds only 9 of them even have triple digit homeruns, and the closest to him is Ricky Henderson at 297. Only 6 of the 500 HR club guys have even stolen 200 bases and, Barry has 514.

And now to end it all with the peace de resistance, the greatest random stat Tim Kurkjian ever came up with, in 2004 Barry Bonds set the record for walks in a season with 232, that is 29 more than the 203 that Shawon Dunston had in his 18 year career.