I don’t care what he took. Steroids don’t make it any easy to make contact with a ball going 95 mph. They may have giving his swing power a little help, but he still had to hit the ball.
Plus, if you look at his stats over the years you will see that he has been hitting at least 30 HRs a season since beginning. I know there are years with a few less or a lot more, but this guy has been a consist hitting machine his whole career and way before the drug use allegations.
Just for fun, Here are Number of home runs in the season divided by number of games in schedule that the top 3 hit their homers:
0.45 Barry Bonds
0.43 Mark McGwire
0.39 Babe Ruth (4)
Also, the year that Barry hit his 73 home runs, he had a sluggin-percentage of .863… Which is insane.
I’m not a fan of baseball, but I just thought these were interesting stats to look at. Bonds can connect wood-to-ball very often, and steroids have little to do with that.
Steroids don’t make it easier to hit a 95mph baseball you say? Well thank you Captain Obvious. I guess that’s because steroids don’t increase hand eye coordination. Just like steroids don’t determine your throwing motion, or how you field a ground ball.
I’m assuming that anyone who brings up the point that “he still had to hit the ball” have never hit a 90mph baseball themselves. Or they must be oblivious to the hundreds of other ball players besides Bonds. Hitting a baseball is not that terribly difficult. No shit he still had to hit the ball. He’s a good hitter.
Again, Barry’s detractors are not saying steroids made him a “better” hitter in the sense that his swing somehow changed other than the speed at which he swung the bat. Like steroids somehow made his swing that much sweeter and his eyeballs that much keener. Give me a break. I bet you could look up video of Barry in 1986 and of him in 2007 and his swing would almost be identical.
Anybody who knows anything about swinging a bat will say he increased his bat speed and increased his longevity during which time he maintained that bat speed.
[quote]TKOWKD1 wrote:
Congrats on hitting 756!!!
How anti-climactic was that?
It almost made my wiener go soft.
Innocent until proven guilty, agreed. You know it, I know it and MLB Commissioner knows it that this record is tainted. It wasn’t steroids that made Barry’s head grow big folks; it was hGH - Human Growth Hormone. It’s true he didn’t test positive for Anabolic Steroids, but that’s because there’s no effective way to test for hGH.
This was not a Black and White issue, but an ethical one instead and MLB is a joke because of it.
Is it a disgrace or just a simple sign of the times? Have we become so desensitized by cheating and violence to not care anymore?
World’s All-Time Home Run still safe at 868!
Long live Sadaharu Oh and Hank Aaron![/quote]
Is your avatar a graph showing Barry’s head growth with respect to time?
I played ball in college (SEC champs), and I honestly don’t think steroids helped him connect with the ball or get the bat through the strike zone. It might have helped him muscle out some miss-hit balls, but the vast majority were taters because he’s got a great eye and super bat speed.
What I think juice (and/or hgh) did help with immensely was his durability. He’s lasted several years longer than he might have without it at the physical level of a much younger player. That’s what I think the difference is.
And Josh Gibson was an incredible talent. It’s a crying shame we don’t have solid stats on what he did.
[quote]Zap Branigan wrote:
He admitted taking steroids, he just thought it was flax oil.
All baseball records are tainted. Different eras, different mound heights, different balls, different gloves etc.
It doesn’t matter. He is one of the best hitters of all time and he is a jerk. The record is very anti-climactic. [/quote]
He never even admitted that. He admitted the possibility that his trainer potentially gave him the same substances he was giving other athletes, which were steroids. As far as he knows, he is clean, Greg Anderson is the only person on this planet that can prove otherwise and he is in a jail cell saying nothing.
Something I find impressive is that he has 2,915 career hits, and 756 of those are homeruns, so basically, 1 out of every 4 of his hits in his career has been a homerun!!! That’s insanely good!!
I’m sticking with innocent until proven guilty, I’m giving Bonds the benefit of the doubt, and regardless, 756 homeruns is ALOT of homeruns.
[quote]malonetd wrote:
TKOWKD1 wrote:
World’s All-Time Home Run still safe at 868!
Long live Sadaharu Oh and Hank Aaron!
Josh Gibson?
[/quote]
Yup. Hit 800 homeruns in his career (including 69 in 1934), so his record is next, not Oh’s.
I don’t know if anyone watched Bonds’ press conference yesterday, but the very last question was from a Japanese reporter, and he said Sadaharu Oh hit 868 homeruns, and asked if he was going to break that. Everyone started laughing except for Bonds, who said ‘What about Josh Gibson? He hit 800 homeruns. You forgot about him.’ So I thought that was cool of him to say that.
I could care less if Bonds took some stuff, he is still the greatest homerun hitter of all time.
People talk about his below 300 average, have you seen his OBP%? A walk is as good as a single in my mind.
[quote]tmoney1 wrote:
malonetd wrote:
TKOWKD1 wrote:
World’s All-Time Home Run still safe at 868!
Long live Sadaharu Oh and Hank Aaron!
Josh Gibson?
Yup. Hit 800 homeruns in his career (including 69 in 1934), so his record is next, not Oh’s.
I don’t know if anyone watched Bonds’ press conference yesterday, but the very last question was from a Japanese reporter, and he said Sadaharu Oh hit 868 homeruns, and asked if he was going to break that. Everyone started laughing except for Bonds, who said ‘What about Josh Gibson? He hit 800 homeruns. You forgot about him.’ So I thought that was cool of him to say that.[/quote]
I stayed up and watched it, I found it funny when the reporter asked about Sadaharu Oh he said “well I’d have to tell Sadaharu congratulations”
I thought Bonds was awesome during the press conference, he only got mad at Pedro Gomez and the guy that was an ass and softened him up with a question about his family and than dropped the bomb about the record being tainted, Personally someone that just slanders my achievements and all I have worked so hard every chance they get would piss me off to.
Of course the only clip they play on Sportscenter is Barry getting angry saying the record isn’t tainted.
Not the nice things he said with a big smile about Hank, his dad, etc
Got to love the media
[quote]Kalle wrote:
Of course the only clip they play on Sportscenter is Barry getting angry saying the record isn’t tainted.
Not the nice things he said with a big smile about Hank, his dad, etc
Got to love the media[/quote]
This pretty much sums up the medias coverage of Bonds over the past 5 years.
I’m a long-time Giants fan and Barry Bonds supporter, and one of the sweetest things about watching him break that record is knowing how pissed off it made so many people, most of whom have no real reason to be pissed off about it, they just jumped on the ‘I-hate-Barry-because-he’s-on-top-and- the-news-told-me-he’s-on-steroids’ bandwagon.
Anyone know how much that ball is going for on ebay?
I dislike Barry Lamar Bonds. My reasons stem from things other than his (almost definite) PED abuse. I dislike him for the same reason I don’t like Alex Rodriguez and Roger Clemens. I’ve never met any of them, and I wouldn’t even begin to say I know much past write-ups, articles and some behind-the-scenes anecdotes about them as men.
Everything I’ve heard about Bonds leads me to believe he’s a surly, elitist, hypocritical asshole. Does any of this detract from his abilities on the field? Not in the least, but it does mean that I’d rather not root for the individual on the field.
In addition, I despise liars, and there is no doubt in my mind that he’s been lying about his PED use. Granted, anyone can say ‘well maybe he’s telling the truth’, but at the same time there is so much anecdotal evidence (and at least some hard evidence, which links him to BALCO) that says he’s not telling the truth, and I hate that. Granted, he would be in a ton of legal trouble if he came out and said ‘yeah, I took steroids and HGH’, but maybe he shouldn’t have taken said PED’s in the first place.
All that said, I was happy to see him break the record. While I dislike everything about the man, I appreciate his immense talent and will gladly place him among the 3-5 greatest players of all time (I have a hard time placing him ahead of Ruth, but he’s at the front of the next group with Mays, Hornsby, Williams, Mantle and Cobb, in my opinion).
Good for him…now we can all prepare for ARod to break the record in 9 years (and this is a Red Sox fan who hates ARod saying that).
[quote]tmoney1 wrote:
malonetd wrote:
TKOWKD1 wrote:
World’s All-Time Home Run still safe at 868!
Long live Sadaharu Oh and Hank Aaron!
Josh Gibson?
Yup. Hit 800 homeruns in his career (including 69 in 1934), so his record is next, not Oh’s.
I don’t know if anyone watched Bonds’ press conference yesterday, but the very last question was from a Japanese reporter, and he said Sadaharu Oh hit 868 homeruns, and asked if he was going to break that. Everyone started laughing except for Bonds, who said ‘What about Josh Gibson? He hit 800 homeruns. You forgot about him.’ So I thought that was cool of him to say that.[/quote]
It was very cool of him to say that. When people say this record is tainted, I reply that all records are tainted since blacks couldn’t play until 1946 and MLB wasn’t fully integrated until the 60s.
[quote]tom63 wrote:
tmoney1 wrote:
malonetd wrote:
TKOWKD1 wrote:
World’s All-Time Home Run still safe at 868!
Long live Sadaharu Oh and Hank Aaron!
Josh Gibson?
Yup. Hit 800 homeruns in his career (including 69 in 1934), so his record is next, not Oh’s.
[/quote]
No disrespect to Gibson, because he’s one of my all-time favorite ballplayers and some of the stories I’ve read about him are fantastic, even if they’re exaggerated. But the 800 number is nothing more than an educated guess, as records were very spares in the leagues he played in.
In addition, because he was wrongfully excluded from competing in the majors, he was mostly playing against supremely inferior competition. A large number of his home runs came while playing in Mexican leagues, with many coming against townie teams while barnstorming. Granted, you could argue that Ruth never had to face a league full of African American and Dominican players, but the level of competition in MLB at the time was much higher than what Gibson competed against.
Along with Satchel Paige, he’s at the top of the list of guys I wish had the opportunity to dominate in the majors, because I have no doubt he’d be considered one of the top-20 players ever if given the opportunity to display his immense power in MLB.
Speaking of Gibson (and not to sidetrack this thread too much), read the book ‘Josh Gibson: a Life in the Negro Leagues’. Fantastic read, and along with profiling Gibson and his prodigious home run power, it also details the history of the Negro leagues and some of the greatest ballplayers to ever step on the diamond–regardless of league.
[quote]Kalle wrote:
tmoney1 wrote:
malonetd wrote:
TKOWKD1 wrote:
I thought Bonds was awesome during the press conference, he only got mad at Pedro Gomez and the guy that was an ass and softened him up with a question about his family and than dropped the bomb about the record being tainted, Personally someone that just slanders my achievements and all I have worked so hard every chance they get would piss me off to.
[/quote]
True. And also the guy who asked about Greg Anderson, and Bonds why that was brought up.
Funny you mention Pedro Gomez, because he has been covering Barry Bonds for the last 5 years for ESPN, and now he is the home run champ, where is Pedro gonna go? What is he going to do? LOL.
You know, I can’t stand Barry Bonds, and that has nothing to do with the steroid controvesy and all. I just don’t like baseball. Its a great feat no doubt, but to me, its kinda on the same level as when the US women won that soccer thing a while back.
Just my $.02
I just reread what I posted and I accidentally omitted the fact that even though I don’t like the guy, I do respect him.
I’ve met some people who had amazing talent in this world and they pissed it away. He figured out how to exploit his talent.
Im not a huge baseball fan by any means however,
Way to Go Bonds.
End of story.