Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Equal Ground

A point I just thought of, which strangely, I haven't heard/read brought up before in regards to any possible use of steroids by Barry Bonds, and any possible help this may have given him in regards to his home runs totals vs. Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth.

Has any of you ever heard of the "Aaron shift"? No? How about the "Ruth shift"? No again?

How about Aaron or Ruth getting intentionally walked 60-70 times? Or, 120 times in one season? Still nothing? 604 career intentional walks?

Well, let's throw in 198 or 232 walks in one season? (crickets chirping)

Wow, this is getting difficult.

How about Aaron or Ruth getting walked every, single time first base is open with men on base? How about Aaron or Ruth getting walked even with nobody on base, but two outs in the inning?

How about Aaron or Ruth getting walked with the bases loaded?

Though not proven, steroids could have very well helped Barry Bonds get to the lofty 703 home runs he has in his career. However, there can be absolutely no doubt that if the rest of the league let Bonds play baseball the way they let Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth play baseball, he'd have a chunk more than 703 right now, steroids or no steroids. There was no running from hitters in those eras like the league runs from Bonds now.

Bonds: 604 career intentional BB's (and we'll just ignore all the unintentional/intentional walks for now)

Aaron: 293 career intentional BB's

Ruth: ...hm, data unavailable on intentional walks, but I'm sure he had quite a few...but 604? Possibly. We'll never know.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

And do I hear "I coulda been Champion, if only my knee yada, yada, yada"? Told you it was going to be an easy way to get him out of baseball NOW without any further fuss or news stories...

Anonymous said...

If you're going to toss those in, let's add a few more:

Has Bonds hit twice as many homeruns as the next guy in his league? [Ruth in 1920, 1921, 1926, 1928]

Has Bonds hit more home runs than every other team in his league? [1920; Ruth had 54 - save the Yankees, only the NL Phillies had more than 50]

Has Bonds single-handedly doubled the record for season home runs in two seasons?

Has Bonds ever played in a 154-game season? [Add another 37 to Ruth's totals, right there!]

Did Bonds spent the first four years of his career as a pitcher, and only get 361 at-bats *total* in those seasons? [Total for Bonds' first four: 2082 ABs]

Yes, those crickets are fairly chirping now, aren't they? :-)

As for the walks thing, the only ones to blame are the Giants management, for being too cheap to buy any protection for Bonds.

Jim
AZ Snake Pit
PS The above is my new home - used to be But It's a DRY Heat.... Where'd your links section go?

Anonymous said...

Ah, found your links - they've fallen all the way to the bottom of your page. Dunno if that was intentional. ;-)

Jim