Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Barry Bonds Watch: 711

After a very slow start to the season, it looks like Barry Bonds' bat is heating up. With very few opportunities to actually hit the ball (he gets walked at almost every at-bat), Barry Bonds has hit a home run (#710 and #711) in each of his last two games against the New York Mets, leaving him four shy of eclipsing the 714 mark that was set by Babe Ruth.

In a losing effort this evening, Barry Bonds came in to pinch hit in the ninth inning and sent the game into extra innings with a home run.

plez sez: The remarkable thing is he is 41 years old, he missed all except 14 games in 2005 due to extensive surgery on his right knee, he has a number of bone chips in his left elbow, Major League Baseball has begun to investigate his alleged use of steroids (he claims that he may have used them unknowingly), and he is constantly barraged by a media circus.

I'm still ticked off with the whole steroids controversy because steroid use was not banned by baseball until the 2003 season and sanctions for their use were not put into place until a year later. If he used them as it is alleged between 1998 and 2003, he did nothing but make baseball a better game to watch with all of the home runs he was hitting. And I find it hard to believe that Barry Bonds was the only player in the league who was enhancing his performance with steroids, he just happens to be the BEST (and most visible) player in the league... period!

I'm not a big baseball fan, but this story has me intrigued because I love to see people triumph over what seems to be insurmountable odds. It is a long season and I would love to see Barry Bonds present a serious challenge to Hank Aaron's record of 755 career home runs. This is probably Bonds' last season in baseball and it is doubtful that I will ever live to see another major league baseball player hit over 700 home runs.

All together now: "Barry! Barry! Barry!"

2 comments:

brotherbrown said...

Quiet as it's kept, Roger Clemens must have been on the juice, too. His head also got fat and he was a more effective pitcher after he turned 40, but no one will even whisper about him.

Christopher King said...

Ahhh, the juice. Plez is correct. It was not illegal and it's not tantamount to betting on baseball, however, to bring up a sore subject that I'm still torn over. And I like Pete Rose; used to valet his damn Porsches in undergrad. He was always nice to me in a very real way.

My problem with the juice is that you don't know what kind of playing field you've got. Hell, one of my tennis idols tried 'roids for a minute in the twilight of his career (McEnroe, not Ashe -- the other one).

Anyway, They keep a lot of things on the DL in Baaahhston. Check out the antics of one of their flagship corporations, supported by the Federal District Court, in fact.

http://christopher-king.blogspot.com/2006/03/american-tower-corp-got-away-with.html

And you can watch the movies about it at KingCast.net