Make No Mistake, Bonds Isn’t Done Yet

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

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By now, everyone has passed their judgment on Barry Bonds. The fashion designer Mark Ecko may merely have been engineering a publicity stunt when he bought Bonds’s 756th home run ball and let the masses vote on what to do with it, but the verdict seems to capture the general mood: The ball will be branded with an asterisk and presented to the Hall of Fame. Bonds is marked, but as a class of criminal well below the level of Pete Rose, Hal Chase, or the Black Sox. This is fair enough; now he can once again be just the best ballplayer of his time.

Last night, Bonds played his final home game as a San Francisco Giant, thus continuing a fine baseball tradition. Babe Ruth played his final game as a Boston Brave, Willie Mays played his as a New York Met, Hank Aaron played his as a Milwaukee Brewer, and so Bonds will play his in an unfamiliar uniform.

What makes Bonds different from his predecessors is that he’ll still be a relevant ballplayer next year, when he’ll turn 44 in July. Ruth hit .181 in 28 games in his last season, at 40. Mays hit .211 in 66 games during his last season, when he was 42, and famously transformed into an old man before everyone in the World Series. Aaron, playing mainly to earn a promised stake in a beer distributorship, hit .229 over 85 games at 42 and then retired.

Bonds will not be hitting .181 next year. He’s still one of the five best hitters in baseball. Among National League hitters with at least 400 plate appearances, he leads in on-base average by nearly 50 points, ranks sixth in slugging average, and fourth in slugging average less batting average, a measure of pure power. He leads outright in walks. Per Baseball Prospectus, he’s been worth .434 runs more per game than average, second-best in the league.

There’s little reason to think Bonds can’t do as well next year, which makes a fine measure of how good he is — at 43, racked by injuries and beset by the enormous pressures deservedly brought on by his many scandals and achievements, he’s now merely as good a hitter as David Ortiz or Albert Pujols. I never thought he’d really recover from the knee injury that cost him most of 2005, and here he is, still dominant. Imagine Prince Fielder, rather than Carlos Delgado, had played first for the Mets this year: That’s what 120 games of Bonds is worth compared to a full season from a perfectly average hitter.

Some team will sign Bonds for next year, and they’ll be in for a circus, especially if Bonds is indicted for tax evasion or perjury after this season, as many suspect he will be. This team will also be doing about as much for their pennant hopes as any team in baseball.

That team may play in the National League. Bonds has repeatedly said that he’d prefer to stay in the senior circuit, and because the league is so mediocre, any decent team willing to bring on Bonds could win the pennant by a dozen games. Don’t be at all surprised to see him end up with the rival San Diego Padres or Los Angeles Dodgers. Even so, it seems most likely that he’ll end up a designated hitter in the American League, partly because it will presumably

keep him healthier than playing the field would, and partly because NL general managers will be nervous about a 44-year-old with bad knees holding up in left, no matter how well he’s done this year.

There is an even more limited field for Bonds’s services in the AL than many realize. Boston simply doesn’t need him. None among Chicago, Toronto, Cleveland, Detroit, and the Yankees have a place for him. Anaheim and Seattle could use him, but neither team is very likely to bring on such a controversial player: Anaheim looked into voiding Gary Matthews’s contract over an hGH allegation this year, while Seattle has traded players in part because they were thought to drink too much. Bonds seems an unlikely fit.

This takes in more or less every good team and every team in a glamorous market in the whole league, meaning that, predictably, the best fit for Bonds is probably the team everyone assumes will land him: the Oakland Athletics. Right across the bay from San Francisco, the A’s will have a real chance at the World Series next year. They value on-base average as much as any team in baseball, have a good history with controversial players, and would, of course, be better positioned than any other team to take advantage of Bonds’s popularity in northern California. This would also fit the pattern: Ruth, Mays, and Aaron may have ended up in unfamiliar uniforms, but they didn’t end up in unfamiliar cities. Bonds’s day as the top story in the game has (probably) passed. He still may have it in him, though, to raise a flag in the Bay Area. You know he’d love nothing more.

tmarchman@nysun.com


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