Tainted Love: A Retrospective Look at the Glory Years of Barry Bond's Career Through the Lens of a Naive Thirteen Year-Old Boy Who Watched it Unfold

         The year is 2004.  I am 13 years old.  It’s the 8th grade.  I don’t believe in Santa Claus and I don’t believe in the Easter Bunny.  I do, however, believe that the comings and goings of the San Francisco Giants has an direct, and extremely significant, impact on my everyday life.    It isn't a one way street, either.  What I do also has a direct cosmic impact on their whether they win or lose.  A quick and easy example of this (and one that I still hold myself accountable for) was, when leading by five runs in Game 6 of the 2002 World Series, I declared “This game’s over!”  If you don’t already know the embarrassing inaccuracy of this statement, the Angels (and their GODDAMN MONKEY) rallied back to win that game, and then won Game 7 as well.  Thus, stealing away the World Series from the Giants.  There you go Giant’s fans, now you know why they lost.  I'm sorry.

Having only lived in the Bay Area since 2000, it just so happens that the only major league baseball I have ever witnessed was the single most dominant five-year stretch of baseball ever played by anyone with a name other than Ruth.  It is the sports fan’s equivalent of losing your virginity to Adriana Lima, which creates an unfortunate and daunting measuring stick for all those to follow.  Although the analogy would only be complete if you found out afterwards that Adriana had a boob-job, an ass implant, multiple nose-jobs to fix her Nomar nose, and surgically removed the gut the once hung over the edge of her jeans like a frozen waterfall.  Whether this effects your opinion of her is irrelevant.  Because, whether it does or doesn’t taint the memory, you still have to be appreciative of the time you had with her.  The time when you were naive, in awe.  Just grateful to be in her presence.  Of course, I am referring to the super-human performance put on from 2000-04 by none other than Barry Lamar Bonds.  To put it in a more definitive context, here are his 162 game averages over that period:

Years	AB	R	H	HR	RBI	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
00-04	480	139	163	59	123	198	72	0.339	0.535	0.781	1.316

As I was routinely putting up similar numbers in my countless seasons of MVP Baseball 2004, playing with my custom-built 6’8” 260 lb switch-hitting, shortstop whose name was undoubtably Cody Saunders, nothing at all seemed too fishy about this performance.  

By 2004, Bonds had reached that exclusive Tiger Woods, Michael Jordan level, where one could offhandedly refer to him by his first name and any discerning sports fan would immediately know who was being spoken of, and would have a desperately important and novel opinion about him (admittedly, due to the commonality of his name, Michael is probably a better comparison here - I mean, how many athletes are named Tiger?  But I digress).  Even further, Bonds had reached the rarified air in the game of baseball of a one-man show stopper.  And in a game where a position player cannot win a championship single-handedly, he was as close to the ultimate baseball super hero as there has ever been.  Or maybe he was the ultimate super villain.  To this day, I really can’t decide where I stand, and that is exactly what made Bonds so transcendently captivating. He was the kind of player whose likeness is only halfway chiseled onto the Mount Rushmore of baseball, having been abruptly stopped in mid-construction. He was the kind of player who you would schedule bathroom breaks relative to how far away the team was from his synonymous cleanup spot.  Let’s see...Bonds is up in five batters?  I can hold it.  He was the kind of player who would sell out opposing team’s stadiums, fans packing in standing-capacity-only-style just to get the opportunity to boo him a half dozen times in an afternoon.    

You have to realize, that there is not a player like this in the game today. I only say this because I caught myself making a "Bonds-ian" (Bonds-ian: (adj.) unfathomable brilliance performed with an unmistakable level of lackadaisical indifference, as if it was the easiest thing in the world and they cannot believe that others cannot do it as well.  In a sentence: Damn, the way Mozart wrote that play was straight Bonds-ian, or, The way he just hit that home run a quarter mile into the upper deck, set Yankee Stadium on fire, and then jogged around the bases like he had done it a million times was Bonds-ian) comparison to Miguel Cabrera in a conversation with my father the other day.  And then a slapped myself, and regained consciousness.  Cabrera is undoubtedly the best hitter on the planet today, and he is looking to take a 2-0 lead in “Triple Crowns vs. the Rest of Humanity since 1967” contest, but all it takes is a very superficial glance at a stat-sheet to realize how fruitless the comparison to the prime Bonds really is.  Here are Cabrera’s 162 game averages over the past five-years:

Years	AB	R	H	HR	RBI	BB	SO	BA	OBP	SLG	OPS
09-13	608	112	204	40	127	88	102	0.335	0.419	0.600	1.019

Phenomenal.  Astounding.  Brilliant.  But Bonds-ian?  No.  Not even close.  There is an argument if one looks only at the misleading metrics of batting average, RBI, and hits, but that is where the comparison crashes, burns, and explodes into a fiery ball of close-but-no-cigar.  Bonds was simply on another level.  Based on OPS alone the comparison is over before it even begins.  And, for the more sabermetrically-minded, Bonds’s average WAR over the span was 10.2, versus Cabrera’s 6.4.  However, these points still do not encapsulate what made Bonds truly Bonds-ian.   One can sit around all day breaking down his numerical supremacy, but, when one really gets down to the nitty-gritty details of what made him so different than all others who came before him, and all others who have come since, it was so much more than what could ever be captured in the rigid confines of a box score.   

First and foremost, it was the fear, as pure as it was visceral, that he inflicted on the opposition night in and night out, menacingly and shamelessly intruding over the plate, strapped with armor befitting of the Hound.  And, then, shooting daggers at any pitcher who accidentally nicked him while trying to establish the inside corner.  Of course, everyone knew that prime Bonds would never charge the mound, as it would require a sustained burst of effort unfitting of a baseball god, but I’m sure the stare, as condescending and accusatory as it was, would be scary nonetheless.  And the fear did not merely apply to opposing pitchers, as Bonds was an equal opportunity provider to all those who looked to challenge his terrifying reign as baseball’s king - opposing fielders, managers, and fans alike (and if you think the opposing DH was exempt, just skip to 4:10 and see if Tim Salmon looks confident).  To think of it, you didn’t even have to be on the opposing team to face the wrath of Bonds’s contempt of all things non-Bonds, patrolling the dugout like Sauron’s eye.  I watched on with perverse sense of glee as the Jeff Kent/Barry Bonds reality show unfolded in front of my eyes, and reveled, ear to the radio, as the intimate details of the clubhouse brawl between Bonds and Jason Christiansen were leaked to the public (In all seriousness, can you imagine a Kent-Bonds reality show?  Picture the narrative: the redneck Jeff Kent takes city-boy-Bonds out camping for a month.  I swear to God, Jeff, if I catch you stealing my cream again, I’m going home!!  I thought it was lotion, Barry, I’m sorry!  You know how dry my skin gets.  I cannot possibly let myself believe that there isn’t a Hollywood executive out there who hasn’t been tirelessly trying to make this happen for over a decade).

It was the way he ran (or didn’t run to be more accurate) down to first base with that trademark indifference that stunk of the arrogant odor that anything short of a home run was simply beneath him, not worth his time or effort. Imagine playing second base against Bonds (which should legally be called “the right fielder’s assistant” once you cross 30 feet into the outfield grass) and attempting to stay in front of one of those classically Bonds-ian sinking, one-hop laser beams, all the while watching him lolly-gagging towards first in your peripherals, giving off the vibe “catch it, don’t catch it, I don’t give a fuck,”  without soiling yourself.  

And his defense, oh, his defense.  Never has the game witnessed a man play the field with more contempt.  It was as if he won eight Gold Gloves early on in his career purely out of the motivation to make his later lack of effort more transparent, and more annoying.  The entire Bonds clan can breathe a long sigh of relief that GIFs and memes had not been invented by Game 6 of the 2002 World Series.  Can you imagine how many hits the repeated image of Bonds falling over not once, but twice on the same play would have gotten?  A billion?  To steal a quote from Joe Rogan, it would have broken the internet.  All in all, Bonds moved at the exact same speed throughout all five of his prime years.  That was, a constant pace of “fuck you miles per hour.”

Obviously, when anyone brings up the “Is Bonds the greatest player of all time?” argument, there is a swift and furious backlash, and, in all probability, this is rightly so.  But, I do not write this piece in order to make that point or to engage in another tiresome debate over performance enhancing drugs, but rather, to hop into the time machine of nostalgia and reflect on the preposterous display of baseball genius we witnessed in the Bay Area at the turn of the century.  A five year period when we were forced to learn a lesson from this titan of the game, when we were forced to learn the truth.  That it was his plate, it was his rules, and it was his game.  You could come if you played along.  And kept quiet.  But, we also learned two other lessons about the so-called Bonds-ian way.  That it wasn’t the way you make friends.  And it wasn’t the way you win championships  Two facts that were never more apparent than when a rag-tag group of relative unknowns came out of nowhere to win it all in 2010.  And again in 2012.  And furthermore, when in 2013, when a group of writers, ready and willing to get their long awaited revenge on a man who had for years treated them like the tiresome crusty dirt clods stuck between the spikes of his cleat, only gave Bonds a 36% vote into the Hall Fame.  Less than Craig Biggio, Jack Morris, Jeff Bagwell, Mike Piazza, Tim Raines, Lee Smith, Curt Schilling, and the equally-disgraced Roger Clemens.  All players who couldn’t hold a candle up to the raging inferno that was Barry Bonds. 

This was a man who had not one, not two, but an entire wall of lockers in the clubhouse.  A man who walked the Earth with a level of entitlement that was so grandiose that it actually eclipsed his seemingly endless talent.  And yet, I do not feel disappointment when I reflect on Bonds’s career and the time I spent eagerly watching it.  As I would not be disappointed about my hypothetical time with the hypothetically performance-enhanced Adriana Lima.  Rather, I feel nothing but gratitude. Gratitude to have witnessed his greatness, to have seen an athletic tidal wave with my own two eyes.  And, as his career came to its notorious end, and as the wave crashed along the beaches of San Francisco, whether you were awestruck or disappointed, Barry did exactly what he always did, he made you feel.  He made you feel something.  It was what he did every moment during those five years.  It was the Bonds-ian swagger that always left the child in me wondering - could he even do more?  Could he even be better?  And, to this day, as Usain Bolt turns and celebrates before the finish line, or as Yasiel Puig tries to throw out a runner at first from right field, the child in me stands up and applauds, unable to believe my eyes.  These kings of sport.  These gods amongst men.  These athletes who make you think that their powers are limitless.  Who make you believe that anything is possible, and that the best is yet to come.