Posted on 05/07/2006 10:00:12 PM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
(AP) PHILADELPHIA -- Barry Bonds is heading home, one behind the Babe.
Bonds hit his 713th homer Sunday night, moving within one of tying Babe Ruth for second place on baseball's career list.
The San Francisco Giants' slugger hit a mammoth shot in the sixth inning off Philadelphia right-hander Jon Lieber, sending a 2-1 pitch off the facade of the right-field upper deck during a 9-5 loss to the Phillies.
"They tell me that's the way the Babe used to hit them," Giants manager Felipe Alou said.
Bonds' fifth homer of the season was estimated at 450 feet, one of the longest ever at Philadelphia's hitter-friendly park. He needs 42 to tie Hank Aaron for the major league record.
"About tore that golden arches sign down out there," Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said. "I'm glad he's leaving town, too, because he's about to get hot."
The solo homer cut the Phillies' lead to 5-3, but they soon broke it open and pushed their winning streak to eight games for the first time in 15 years.
The last time Philadelphia won eight in a row was a 13-game run in 1991.
The Giants were headed back to San Francisco to begin a homestand, but Bonds is not expected to play Monday night.
Bonds had been held in check since arriving here on Friday. He went 3-for-9 in Philadelphia's three-game sweep with a pair of singles. He had gone 11 at-bats since his previous home run Tuesday against San Diego.
As he took his slow trot around the bases, some of the Phillies fans -- who had been needling Bonds with boos and derisive chants throughout the series -- stood up, cheered and clicked photographs.
He struck out swinging in his next at-bat against reliever Aaron Fultz in the eighth inning, sending many fans heading for the exits. He was taken out of the game before the bottom of the inning, replaced in left field by Jason Ellison.
Carlos Oliveras caught the home run ball, specially marked to assure authenticity. The 25-year-old Oliveras, an Airman 1st Class who lives on McGuire Air Force Base in Fort Dix, N.J., paid $20 for his seat in Section 202, Row 7.
He said he is a Bonds fan and would probably keep the ball.
"I never thought I was going to be lucky like that," Oliveras said.
It was Bonds' fourth career homer off Lieber. But the seven-time NL MVP came into the game 5-for-36 (.139) against the right-hander, his lowest batting average against any pitcher he had faced at least 15 times.
With his mother cheering in the stands, Bonds pumped his fist as he returned to the dugout, perhaps trying to inspire a slumping Giants team that had lost three straight, six of seven and eight of 11.
Now he is one homer shy of Ruth's 714, one of the most hallowed numbers in a sport ruled by them. Ruth hit No. 714 in 1935 and held the major league record until Aaron broke it on April 8, 1974.
Ruth's total is the record for left-handed hitters, and Bonds has said he's more interested in owning that mark than catching Aaron.
Commissioner Bud Selig has said baseball won't do anything special to celebrate Bonds passing Ruth because it would only put the Giants' star in second place.
Maybe it also has something to do with allegations of steroid use by Bonds and baseball's probe into whether he took performance-enhancing drugs.
Bonds has long denied ever knowingly taking steroids, though the new book "Game of Shadows" reveals his alleged extensive doping regimen the authors say began after the 1998 season when Bonds saw the attention Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa generated in their race for the single-season homers record.
Bonds' personal trainer, Greg Anderson, pleaded guilty to his role in a steroid distribution ring, and a federal grand jury is looking into whether Bonds perjured himself when he testified to the separate grand jury that indicted Anderson and three others in the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative scandal.
Perhaps no pursuit of second place in anything has ever garnered as much attention as Bonds closing in on Ruth. The Phillies said they received about 200 requests for media credentials this weekend, about 125 more than for a typical game.
The Giants do plan a celebration when Bonds catches Ruth. The team was set to take an overnight, cross-country flight and face Houston ace Roy Oswalt at home Monday night to make up an April 12 rainout. But Alou said Bonds probably won't play against the Astros.
As Bonds walked out to left field before the bottom of the first, fans in the front row of the bleachers unfurled a huge sign that read: "Ruth did it on hot dogs and beer. Aaron did it with class. How did YOU do it?" In addition, one `i' and the question mark were dotted with asterisks.
The sign came out again in the third. Another sign in left field read "LIAR."
Lieber (2-4) allowed four runs and six hits in seven innings. He is 2-0 in his last three starts after losing his first four outings.
Pat Burrell hit a two-run homer off Matt Morris (2-3) and drove in three runs for the Phillies. David Bell had three hits and scored twice.
Frick's asterisk is nowadays viewed as an error made out of his personal friendship with Ruth (Frick was the Babe's ghost writer) and the baseball world's reverence of the Bambino. Bud Selig, whose only significant accomplishment as commissioner is the realignment of the divisions and the Wild Card, would be a fool to duplicate Frick's biggest mistake.
Selig has revealed himself to be a Frickin' idiot in the past; only Bud would have declared a tie in an All-Star game. But he can't be a total moron, and he should be able to figure out that if he comes down on Bonds, the question will be where in the heck he was while all of Bonds'(and other players') juicing was going on. IMHO, any suspension for rules infractions by Bonds is a tacit admission that he fell down on the job, and should resign.
I have yet to hear or read of a credible or fair way to determine which home runs Bonds, Giambi, Caminiti, Palmeiro or Canseco may have hit that were a result of use of steroids. Certainly nobody is suggesting that there have been any tainted homers in Bonds' past three seasons under mandatory random testing. Besides, singling Bonds out among all known juiced players is unfair not only to Bonds, it is congenitally unjust.
For better or for worse, unless something season-ending happens to Bonds very soon, he will be second on the all-time list when this season is over. He may be under indictment or he may be suspended, but he will be second only to Hank Aaron.
We may not agree with each other on everything, but I truly admire folks like you who keep an open mind. I like to think I do as well....so much easier to listen to others when ideas are articulated, rather than listening to tired old rants saying the same thing!!
I know athletes are careful of what they put into their bodies, but I'm not 100% convinced that Bonds wasn't at least partially duped since the cream and the clear were applied topically. As for the workouts, what I've seen and read, they are indeed the real deal and did involve the usual protein powder and pills. His personal trainer put him through a pretty rigorous routine, some of which we could see on the field before the park opened. I'm sure I'm a bit naive, and will cop to such, but still wonder if he didn't put too much stock in the integrity of his trainer.
I thank you for input that can help me make my decisions as well!
Well said.
My guess is that he will pass Ruth but retire before surpassing Aaron to avoid the aggravation.
Just wanted to clarify that Ruth would have faced Latino pitchers, just not black Latino pitchers.
Amazing what some people are willing to overlook in the face of ample evidence.
I hope they have a rally( similar to the cursed ball in chicago)by dropping it in a vat of dog poopoo and then smash it, sell the t.v rights so the guy who caught it can pocket a few dollars and then have it replayed over and over on espn's top 10.
That I doubt, just because they didn't have radar guns doesn't mean they weren't throwing 90 or better.
That I doubt, just because they didn't have radar guns doesn't mean they weren't throwing 90 or better.
Looks like Baseball is not going to do a thing about this. What a pathetic Commissioner! A weak, jelly-spined, risk-averse place-holder.
So it won't matter to you if hundreds of the HR were due to steroid use as long as the last 50 were 'legit'. That's a crappy argument.
Answer: A whole bunch, but not in lrague play. Ruth used to go "barnstorming" in the off season through Central America and faced all kinds of pitchers.
What makes Ruths batting so impressive is that the ball was not as lively then as it is now.
Ok I'll rephrase. 'Modern Day pitching', which I'm sure is better due to mechanics. The 90mph fastball idea just seemed to be the best way to say it at the moment. =)
Questions like this are pretty silly, when you look at all of the vast differences in a sport from one generation to the next.
Here's my question . . . Leaving Latin pitchers out of the mix (since there was no "language barrier" in Major League Baseball that prevented them from playing back in Ruth's day) -- How many black pitchers has Bonds faced in his career, and how much better were they than the white pitchers he faced?
One reason Aaron never got the credit he deserved is that he was something of an anomaly in the game of baseball. He was the all-time home run king, yet was never much of a "slugger" in the classic sense of the term. He never hit more than 47 home runs in any given season, and won only three home run titles in his 23-year career (compared to Ruth's 12 in only about 16 full seasons), and surpassed Ruth in a methodical, consistent manner of the course of his career. Aaron was basically a line-drive hitter with very strong wrists whose 755 career home runs were primarily a function of the small ballparks in which he played (in Atlanta and Milwaukee).
This is not a knock on Aaron, of course. Despite his career home run title, I think he's one of the most underrated ballplayers of all time. His 755 home runs really overshadow the fact that he was a great all-around hitter. His 3,771 hits are #3 on the all-time list (to put this in perspective, just understand that he has 3,000+ career hits other than the 755 home runs he hit), and his .305 lifetime batting average is actually higher than "all-time great" Pete Rose's.
barry bonds WHO?....
Bonds' ERA = 0.00. I'm pretty sure he's never allowed an earned run. And his career WHIP is 0.00 too.
I hear Gaius Tullius Celeritas was OK.
A banner being held by people to the right of your banner read, "Aaron did it on class".
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