PITTSBURGH (93.7 The Fan) – It was one play, one throw, one loss that really turned fans on Barry Bonds. Saturday, baseball’s all-time home run leader returns to be enshrined the Pirates Hall of Fame and a couple of his teammates want to remind you how good he was.
“To me the second-best player of all-time behind Babe Ruth,” said former Pirate and teammate of Bonds John Wehner. “Shohei Ohtani may have a say, but Barry Bonds was the most incredible player I’ve ever seen.”
“He was the best all-around player I ever played with when you think of everything he could do,” said former Pirates pitcher Bob Walk and teammate with Bonds his whole career in Pittsburgh.
Both talked about his attributes, and we’ll get to them, but then both brought up the play in the ninth inning on October 14, 1992 in Atlanta.
“He’s a Gold Glove winner in the outfield, but in Pittsburgh, because of that one throw, out of everything else he did as a Pirate, everyone poo-poos his defense,” Walk told 93.7 The Fan. “He’s got a number of Gold Gloves on his mantle. He was an excellent outfielder.”
“By far the best left fielder I’ve ever seen play,” Wehner said. “I know he gets a lot of flak for the throw in the 1992 Game 7. This guy got to balls effortlessly. He got rid of them quickly. He was an accurate as anybody. His left field play was the best I’ve ever seen.”
Yet with two outs in the ninth inning in the National League Championship Series, he couldn’t make the throw to get Sid Bream at the plate and Atlanta advanced to the World Series.
It wasn’t just that, there were the personality issues, as Walk put it he wasn’t the friendliest guy with certain people and it cost him. Not just in fan support, but both former teammates said Bonds should have won three straight National League MVPs instead of two of out three years.
Bonds left for money, a sum of which would buy you an average player now, but was out of the Pirates price range. The team was dismantled and instead of being remembered as the key player to bring back winning, he was the greedy, sometimes ignorant man with a bad throw who started the Pirates days back in the cellar.
Saturday, he returns to PNC Park to be honored with his manager Jim Leyland and two-time World Series champion Manny Sanguillen as they get inducted into the Pirates Hall of Fame during an on-field ceremony.
The numbers make him as obvious a choice for a Hall of Fame as anyone who wore black and gold.
· 1010 games
· 672 runs
· 984 hits
· 220 doubles
· 36 triples
· 176 home runs
· 556 RBI
· 251 stolen bases
· .275 batting average
· .380 on-base percentage
· .883 OPS
Wehner said in today’s analytical world, fans would marvel at his bat speed, saying it’s the fastest he’s ever seen (Oneil Cruz included) and because the swing was short, it allowed him more time to see pitches and be that good.
Walk recalled how driven he was in a conversation on a team plane. Bonds was in his third MLB season and he told Walk the reason he never comes out of the lineup, and why he gave Leyland such a hard time of staying in it, ‘I can’t make the Hall of Fame unless I play every day, so I’m playing every day.’
Now Bonds returns 32 years since he last played for the Pirates to be honored alongside Roberto Clemente, Willie Stargell, Honus Wagner and others.
“He deserves the moment,” Wehner told 93.7 The Fan. “I know not everybody loved him. He might not have been a like Mario Lemieux, a Crosby, a Stargell or McCutchen now days. He was the best player in baseball by far his years in Pittsburgh.”
“Should have won three straight MVPs. A lot of folks are younger and may not remember him, certainly one of the top five baseball players in the history of the Pirates.”
What will the reaction be? Penguins great Jaromir Jagr worried incessantly about being booed returning to Pittsburgh as he left wanting out and at times could rub people the wrong way. A packed arena standing and applauding greeted him a few months ago. Steelers Hall of Famer Terry Bradshaw had an estranged relationship with Chuck Noll and the Rooney family, when he finally returned two decades after that bitter split, he received two standing ovations and chants of his name.
Walk says it would mean an awful lot to Bonds if he were to get that reception in PNC Park on Saturday with all he’s gone through, including the awkwardness of being in Cooperstown to support Leyland this summer.
“Hopefully he does, because it would be well deserved,” Walk said of potential cheers for Bonds. “He brought winning back to the organization. We were coming out of some horrible years, 100-loss years, the drug trials. The team was going to get sold and moved. It was a bad situation. He, and a couple other really good players and Jim Leyland, brought winning baseball back.”
Barry Bonds will finally be a Hall of Famer, what will the reaction be when he returns to the city where his career started?