I was listening to a discussion of ESPN's Sports Century list of the greatest North American athletes of the 20th century. The names generally won't surprise you -- Jordan, Ruth, Ali, Jim Brown, Gretzky, Owens, Thorpe, Mays, Nicklaus, Didriksen.
(Aside -- I've been amazed over the years at the whitewashing [no pun intended] of Muhammad Ali's career; he was an innovative boxer and personality, and I tended to root for him, but I don't think an objective review of his career puts him in the top 30 of the century's athletes. And I have no idea what to do with Babe Didriksen, but I doubt anyone else does, and they just wanted to get a woman into the top 10.)
After Ruth and Mays, Aaron (14), Jackie Robinson (15), Williams (16), Cobb (20), DiMaggio (22), Gehrig (34), Mantle (37), Koufax (42) round out the top 50. Honus Wager and Rogers Hornsby are in the 80s, presumably because no one voting saw them play.
But the point here isn't to quibble about the list, particularly when it doesn't appear anyone defined "athlete;" it's to marvel at how unbelievably long ago the list was created. Consider that the following careers either hadn't started or were in their infancies at the time: Tiger Woods, Michael Phelps, Lance Armstrong, Serena Williams, Jeff Gordon, Peyton Manning, Tom Brady, Tim Duncan, LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Sidney Crosby, Floyd Mayweather Jr., Alex Rodriguez, Mariano Rivera, Derek Jeter and Albert Pujols. It also wouldn't include the second half of Barry Bonds' career and the marvel that was.
...And I'm sure I've left neglected someone. (Roger Federer would be on the list if Switzerland were in North America.)
Consider that: Tiger Woods and Michael Phelps didn't make the cut.
If we were making a list of the top 100 athletes of the 100 years between 1916 and today, some of those names would cruise to the top. Woods revolutionized a sport and dominated it like no other. Michael Phelps is, by a wide margin, the most decorated Olympian ever. Serena Williams might be the greatest female tennis player of all time. Lance Armstrong won more of his sport's championships than anyone in history. Peyton Manning and Tom Brady are Mt. Rushmore quarterbacks. LeBron James is a phenomenon hitherto unwitnessed in sports.
Where does that leave the lowly baseball players? I'm pretty sure none but Bonds could even sniff the list, and that's only if his chemical adventures are disregarded. Maybe Mike Trout, Bryce Harper and their generation can redeem America's Pastime.
For me, the epiphany related to the compilation of this list is how incredibly much has transpired in sports since the turn of the millennium, which hadn't previously felt so long ago. I guess time flies when the Royals win the World Series.
Showing posts with label Barry Bonds. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Barry Bonds. Show all posts
23 February 2016
21 August 2015
A Look Back: Boy Could He Rake
David Ortiz's next home run launches him into the rarefied air above Lou Gehrig and solidly in the middle of a Hall of Fame discussion.
The subject has been examined here before:
- he's slightly lacking on the numerical end because his star didn't rise until he was nearly 30;
- his peak is Hall of Fame worthy;
- he is a larger-than-life character and helped bring three world titles to beleaguered Boston;
- he is a DH by necessity, which means he has cost his teams many runs on defense;
- for several years he collected a skein of big hits in key spots that turned around games;
- he allegedly tested positive for steroids before they were outlawed in baseball.
All of that is noteworthy while remembering another performer whose Hall of Fame credentials are being debated. Already an MVP and Hall of Famer-to-be, it's generally acknowledged that Barry Bonds began tinkering with the juice after 1998, and from 2000 to 2007 was the most spectacular and dominating hitter ever.
With Ortiz as the benchmark of greatness, here's what you might have forgotten about Bonds: in those eight years he crushed an average of 40 homers and walked 131 times, despite averaging just 123 games played. His slash stats of .322/.517/.724 dwarf Big Papi's -- and everyone else's. Ortiz compiled an OPS 56% above average; Bonds was 121% above average. In other words, Bonds was more than twice the hitter the average player was. He was competing at a whole other level than the next best baseball player in the world.
Remember the year Bonds smashed the home run record, with 73? He walked a league-leading 177 times that year, leaving just 476 opportunities to swing for the fences. The next year he walked 198 times -- with 46 home runs -- and two years later he walked a mind-boggling 232 times and still managed to smash 45 homers in just 373 at bats. That season, 2004, Bonds was 37 years old.
We think of Ortiz as "clutch," but if there was a guy to avoid in a key spot, it was Barry Bonds. Remember those 60 intentional walks for Ortiz over five years? Pitchers purposely sent Bonds to first 60 or more times in each of three seasons. For his steroid period, these were his intentional walk tallies:
2000 - 22
2001 - 35
2002 - 68
2003 - 61
2004 - 120
2005 - hurt most of the season
2006 - 38
2007 - 43
bold = led Majors
That's with Hall of Fame candidate Jeff Kent batting behind him. Bonds earned 688 lifetime intentional passes. That more than all of Hall-of-Famer Jim Rice's walks -- intentional or otherwise -- in a 16-year career.
Bonds also led the league in on base percentage in six of those last seven seasons, including his age 41 and 42 years. That's right, no team would pick up Bonds at age 43 in 2008 because his skills had deteriorated so badly that he could only muster 28 home runs in 126 games, lead the league with a .480 OBP and post an OPS 69% better than average. For good measure, Bonds swiped 30 of 32 bases in his last six campaigns.
It's difficult to describe to someone who didn't experience Bonds's career how devastating and dominating he was in those years. He would wait out pitchers' fearful nibbling until he got a pitch in the zone and then he'd explode on it and send the ball into McCovey Cove. If that pitch never came, he'd diffidently remove his body armor and stroll to first without regret. The entire defensive philosophy against the Giants revolved around Barry Bonds. His body language and personal style were arrogant, self-centered and often brutish. But boy could he rake.
For his career, Bonds won seven MVPs, finished second twice, fourth once, fifth twice and eighth once. He would have fared better but writers didn't understand on base percentage and thought he was a bastard. Imagine if they had liked and appreciated him.
If you ever had the thought that you'd like to see what "so-and-so" could do on steroids, don't bother. We saw what the Willie Mays of the 90s actually did on steroids and it was unimaginable.
21 August 2014
Your Favorite Team Is -- You
What do Ryan Braun, Ray Lewis, Barry Bonds and Ray Rice have in common?
Their hometown fans cheered all of them.
That's after Braun wriggled out of accountability following a year of self-righteous lying. That's after Lewis escaped punishment for his involvement in a double murder. That's after Bonds, generally despised by media and teammates, admitted to a years of cheating and lying about it. That's after Rice beat his wife unconscious.
Do fans not care about smarmy, cynical liars? Do they not care about murder? About inveterate cheating? About domestic abuse?
Sure they do, in theory. But they care much more about something practical and immediate. They care about their own enjoyment.
They care about the success of the teams they care about.
And if disgust over homicide or assault and battery or a malign personality interferes with the hometown nine (or eleven) winning, well, suddenly it's in conflict with something more important. Because our mood is elevated when our team wins. Our happiness is marginally diminished when they lose. And we don't like our happiness diminished, no matter how slightly. Someone else's murder or beating or lying, cheating and stealing are of little consequence compared to a sliver more of our contentment. So we support the sociopath who helps our team win and rationalize his actions.
Some examples
Consider this: whom did you root for in this past year's NCAA basketball tournament? Unless you have a connection to a contending team, the answer is probably whoever you wagered would win. (And if you have a natural preference, you probably picked that team anyway.) You didn't really care about the teams, schools or fan bases. Your favorite team was -- you.
Jameis Winston was accused of rape and caught red-handed stealing food from a supermarket. If he were an ordinary student he would have been expelled from college. Yet he will start every game at quarterback for first-ranked Florida State this football season because virtually the entire population of Tallahassee cares more about Seminole victories than about moral issues. That's for people in Gainesville and Coral Gables to concern themselves with, at least until their key guy commits some felony.
We're All Guilty
In fact, the college football universe generally supports Winston. They want to see him play. Watching him brings us pleasure even if we're not Florida State fans. Consequently there's been almost no backlash at all, even in places like Eugene, Oregon and Madison, Wisconsin and Oxford, Mississippi and most certainly in Bristol, Connecticut.
It's also why sports fans are generally self-deluded about the college-sports industrial complex that makes billions of dollars for schools, media companies and apparel sellers, at the expense of athletes who are not and never could be college students but are compensated for their profit-creating services with scholarships of utterly no value to them.
So next time you see some thug welcomed back by the hometown fans despite actions that should have landed him in the state penitentiary, don't be surprised. The fans are just honoring the desires of the most important people in the world. Themselves.
Their hometown fans cheered all of them.
That's after Braun wriggled out of accountability following a year of self-righteous lying. That's after Lewis escaped punishment for his involvement in a double murder. That's after Bonds, generally despised by media and teammates, admitted to a years of cheating and lying about it. That's after Rice beat his wife unconscious.
Do fans not care about smarmy, cynical liars? Do they not care about murder? About inveterate cheating? About domestic abuse?
Sure they do, in theory. But they care much more about something practical and immediate. They care about their own enjoyment.
They care about the success of the teams they care about.
And if disgust over homicide or assault and battery or a malign personality interferes with the hometown nine (or eleven) winning, well, suddenly it's in conflict with something more important. Because our mood is elevated when our team wins. Our happiness is marginally diminished when they lose. And we don't like our happiness diminished, no matter how slightly. Someone else's murder or beating or lying, cheating and stealing are of little consequence compared to a sliver more of our contentment. So we support the sociopath who helps our team win and rationalize his actions.
Some examples
Consider this: whom did you root for in this past year's NCAA basketball tournament? Unless you have a connection to a contending team, the answer is probably whoever you wagered would win. (And if you have a natural preference, you probably picked that team anyway.) You didn't really care about the teams, schools or fan bases. Your favorite team was -- you.
Jameis Winston was accused of rape and caught red-handed stealing food from a supermarket. If he were an ordinary student he would have been expelled from college. Yet he will start every game at quarterback for first-ranked Florida State this football season because virtually the entire population of Tallahassee cares more about Seminole victories than about moral issues. That's for people in Gainesville and Coral Gables to concern themselves with, at least until their key guy commits some felony.
We're All Guilty
In fact, the college football universe generally supports Winston. They want to see him play. Watching him brings us pleasure even if we're not Florida State fans. Consequently there's been almost no backlash at all, even in places like Eugene, Oregon and Madison, Wisconsin and Oxford, Mississippi and most certainly in Bristol, Connecticut.
It's also why sports fans are generally self-deluded about the college-sports industrial complex that makes billions of dollars for schools, media companies and apparel sellers, at the expense of athletes who are not and never could be college students but are compensated for their profit-creating services with scholarships of utterly no value to them.
So next time you see some thug welcomed back by the hometown fans despite actions that should have landed him in the state penitentiary, don't be surprised. The fans are just honoring the desires of the most important people in the world. Themselves.
04 December 2012
Hall of Flameouts, Writer Edition
The day Boom Boom Mancini climbed into the ring with Duk Koo Kim, he could hardly have known that he was about to make history, and not the kind he'd want to write home to Youngstown about.
Nor did Greg Norman know, entering the final round of the 1996 Masters, the thrashing that history would bestow upon him.
Likewise, Wally Pipp probably never considered how a day off would turn into a headache that would linger thereafter in the record books. (For the record, the whole headache story is a myth.)
In the coming weeks, members of the Baseball Writers Association of America will very likely thrust themselves into the trash bin of history, possibly without realizing the folly with which future generations will view their decisions. Sometime before January 9, the writers will almost certainly reject the Hall of Fame candidacies of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire, Mike Piazza and Sammy Sosa.
In case you're not keeping score at home, that would be MLB's greatest power/speed combination and home run king, the most fearsome pitcher of his generation, the 10th all-time home run hitter who retired with a .982 OPS, the greatest hitting catcher ever, and the only player in the game's 140 years to hit 60+ home runs in three different seasons. The history books are already warming up a good guffaw.
If all goes as threatened, the Hall of Fame will be absent the group above in addition to the all-time hits leader (Pete Rose), the third greatest hitter for average of all-time (Joe Jackson) and the man who transformed players from chattel to multimillionaires (Marvin Miller). It will, however, include an empty suit (Bowie Kuhn) and a long list of mediocrities, most of whose HOF cases, if you could call them that, rested on high batting averages in an era of high batting averages (Lloyd Waner, Rick Ferrell and Freddie Lindstrom among others). While the writers pass on the list above, they seem poised to coronate a pitcher (Jack Morris) with a 3.90 lifetime ERA and about as much value to his teams as, say, Lon Werneke. Yes, the Arkansas Hummingbird himself.
It makes you wonder why they don't just roll up the sidewalks of Cooperstown and forget it ever existed. A Baseball Hall of Fame without Pete Rose, Marvin Miller, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens is the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame without the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Bill Graham.
And yet, I don't blame the writers. They have the awesome responsibility of dissecting krill from the baleen of blue whales. No one will ever know for sure if, when and how much the needle contributed to the resumes of the aforementioned, nor if, when and how much it contributed to those whose reputations have yet been sullied. They must distinguish greatness in a swirl of uncertainty through the haze of impropriety.
If history's derision doesn't move the writers to admit a few of the behemoths perhaps a logistical problem will. A major front is brewing over the next two years that threatens ballot mayhem by 2014. This year's selections include legitimate candidates Craig Biggio, Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines, Curt Schilling and Edgar Martinez. (Also aboard: Alan Trammel, Larry Walker and Kenny Lofton, who come up short, in my view.) Entering the ballot the following year will be Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Mike Mussina and Frank Thomas -- again, all worthy. With Clemens, Bonds, McGwire and Piazza, that's 13 candidates -- 14 with Sosa -- and only 10 votes per ballot. The logjam could cause serious gridlock for years. A writer with a multi-year time horizon would be well-served admitting a gaggle of those eligible.
Whatever the writers decide today will be fodder for their 2062 brethren, who are likely to sniff the dominance of Bonds, Clemens and their ilk and wonder what their progenitors were smoking. BBWAA, you've had your warning, which is more than Ray Mancini got.
Nor did Greg Norman know, entering the final round of the 1996 Masters, the thrashing that history would bestow upon him.
Likewise, Wally Pipp probably never considered how a day off would turn into a headache that would linger thereafter in the record books. (For the record, the whole headache story is a myth.)
In the coming weeks, members of the Baseball Writers Association of America will very likely thrust themselves into the trash bin of history, possibly without realizing the folly with which future generations will view their decisions. Sometime before January 9, the writers will almost certainly reject the Hall of Fame candidacies of Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, Mark McGwire, Mike Piazza and Sammy Sosa.
In case you're not keeping score at home, that would be MLB's greatest power/speed combination and home run king, the most fearsome pitcher of his generation, the 10th all-time home run hitter who retired with a .982 OPS, the greatest hitting catcher ever, and the only player in the game's 140 years to hit 60+ home runs in three different seasons. The history books are already warming up a good guffaw.
If all goes as threatened, the Hall of Fame will be absent the group above in addition to the all-time hits leader (Pete Rose), the third greatest hitter for average of all-time (Joe Jackson) and the man who transformed players from chattel to multimillionaires (Marvin Miller). It will, however, include an empty suit (Bowie Kuhn) and a long list of mediocrities, most of whose HOF cases, if you could call them that, rested on high batting averages in an era of high batting averages (Lloyd Waner, Rick Ferrell and Freddie Lindstrom among others). While the writers pass on the list above, they seem poised to coronate a pitcher (Jack Morris) with a 3.90 lifetime ERA and about as much value to his teams as, say, Lon Werneke. Yes, the Arkansas Hummingbird himself.
It makes you wonder why they don't just roll up the sidewalks of Cooperstown and forget it ever existed. A Baseball Hall of Fame without Pete Rose, Marvin Miller, Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens is the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame without the Beatles, Rolling Stones and Bill Graham.
And yet, I don't blame the writers. They have the awesome responsibility of dissecting krill from the baleen of blue whales. No one will ever know for sure if, when and how much the needle contributed to the resumes of the aforementioned, nor if, when and how much it contributed to those whose reputations have yet been sullied. They must distinguish greatness in a swirl of uncertainty through the haze of impropriety.
If history's derision doesn't move the writers to admit a few of the behemoths perhaps a logistical problem will. A major front is brewing over the next two years that threatens ballot mayhem by 2014. This year's selections include legitimate candidates Craig Biggio, Jeff Bagwell, Tim Raines, Curt Schilling and Edgar Martinez. (Also aboard: Alan Trammel, Larry Walker and Kenny Lofton, who come up short, in my view.) Entering the ballot the following year will be Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, Mike Mussina and Frank Thomas -- again, all worthy. With Clemens, Bonds, McGwire and Piazza, that's 13 candidates -- 14 with Sosa -- and only 10 votes per ballot. The logjam could cause serious gridlock for years. A writer with a multi-year time horizon would be well-served admitting a gaggle of those eligible.
Whatever the writers decide today will be fodder for their 2062 brethren, who are likely to sniff the dominance of Bonds, Clemens and their ilk and wonder what their progenitors were smoking. BBWAA, you've had your warning, which is more than Ray Mancini got.
06 February 2009
Hmmmm...
Major League Baseball has re-tested Barry Bonds' blood sample from the anonymous testing of 2003 and revealed publicly that it had steroids in it...and they're upset about him cheating?
Michael Phelps put the lives of everyone around him in danger when he drove drunk and they want to prosecute him for smoking weed at a party?
Hmmmm.
Michael Phelps put the lives of everyone around him in danger when he drove drunk and they want to prosecute him for smoking weed at a party?
Hmmmm.
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