“I don’t like to talk about [baseball] really. I’d rather just show it on the field.”BARRY BONDS
ANAHEIM – Move over, Babe. Your time has finally passed. You were the most feared hitter the game has ever produced, but you have been replaced.
Baseball purists, otherwise known as GOBN, the Good Old Boy Network, will not like this one bit, but Barry Bonds is now the most feared hitter to ever play this game.
There’s no way around it anymore and Barry Haters will tell you that he’s doing all this World Series damage against an inferior pitching staff in the Angels.
The same pitching staff that took care of the Yankees in the opening round of the playoffs. The same pitching staff that isn’t pitching to Bonds. However, the slugger has put up numbers that are not human, numbers Babe Ruth never produced.
Bonds is hitting .500 in this World Series with three home runs. His slugging percentage – Are you ready for this? – is something from Pluto, 1.417. Barry has not only left the building, he’s left the planet. His on-base percentage is a puffy .727. His OPS, the statistic of the new generation, combines those numbers and Bonds is off the charts at 2.144 – .950 is considered excellent.
For comparison, the Babe’s highest World Series slugging percentage ever was 1.375 in the 1928 four-game sweep of the Cardinals. His highest on-base percentage also came in that series, .647.
Reggie Jackson’s Mr. October performance in 1977 produced a slugging percentage of 1.250, the best ever for a six-game Series. The mark for a seven-game World Series is Gene Tenace’s .913 in 1972.
The shortest World Series, a four-game series, produced the best slugging percentage in history. In 1928 as Lou Gehrig constructed a 1.727 slugging percentage. Of course, it helped having a guy named Ruth hitting ahead of him.
And tonight, for the first time in his life, Bonds can become a champion as the Giants lead the Series, 3-2. Bonds has never won a title on any level.
The most amusing thing about all this is that Bonds still treats the media as if we’re crazy for pointing to his baseball greatness.
Following the 16-4 mashing of the Angels Thursday night at Pac Bell Park, there was Subdued Barry on the podium. Even though he has eclipsed Ruth’s massive shadow, Bonds wants to low key his success.
“I always tell my friends, [when] they say, ‘You’re a big baseball player, you can do this, you can do that,’ ” Bonds explained, “I just tell them, ‘I’m like that surfer boy, I just want to surf, dude, I don’t want to own the store.’
“I just want to go to the ballpark, do my job just like anybody else, go home and be with my family.”
As for all the attention, he said: “That’s fine and dandy, but that’s not why I chose to play baseball. I chose to play baseball because I want to be the best at it for whatever it is for me.
“I don’t like to talk about it really. I’d rather just show it on the field.”
You’ve shown it, Barry. Move over Babe.