Tag: Barry Bonds

MLB 40-40 club: The complete list of all 6 players to have 40 HR and steals, now including Shohei Ohtani

Knocking 40 home runs while stealing 40 bases is one of baseball’s most elusive milestones.

It’s fairly common for a Major League Baseball player to excel in either power or speed, but very few players are masters of both crafts.

One of baseball’s most elusive milestones is the so-called “40-40 club,” which is reserved for players who hit 40 home runs and steal 40 bases in a single season. It’s such a rare feat that, in the nearly 150 years of organized MLB league play, only five players in history had accomplished it prior to 2024.

That changed on Friday, though, as Los Angeles Dodgers slugger Shohei Ohtani. knocked his 40th home run of the season, becoming the sixth player to join the exclusive club. He’s also the first player to do so since Ronald Acuna Jr. last year.

Here’s a look at the complete current list of players that comprise MLB’s 40-40 club.

Nerd out with us over this Greg Maddux and Barry Bonds clip breaking down their approach to each other

This is just incredible content.

Trust me when I say this: you’re going to want to pull up a bowl of popcorn to watch this clip of two baseball legends talking about the chess game that was one at-bat in their storied careers.

Barry Bonds and Greg Maddux were given video from 1998 to talk about an at-bat in which the then-Braves pitcher and the Giants slugger faced off, and you must watch them discuss their approach. Maddux thought about which pitch he threw, then Bonds thought about what the ace would toss next, and then Maddux — in hindsight — knew that he made a mistake.

Just watch and enjoy:

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Barry Bonds hysterically told Derek Jeter he could hit a homer off Satchel Paige

Well, Barry Bonds never lacked for confidence.

Well, nobody can fault legendary MLB slugger Barry Bonds for his confidence.

Ahead of Thursday night’s San Francisco Giants and St. Louis Cardinals game at the historic Rickwood Field in Birmingham, the Fox Sports panel had a lively discussion between Bonds and former MLB superstar Derek Jeter.

Jeter asked Bonds what he would do if he was hitting against all-time pitcher Satchel Paige, who played much of his career in the Negro Leagues before transitioning to the MLB in 1948.

Bonds’ answer was predictably enthusiastic. He thinks he could pretty easily homer off of Paige if he were at the plate, which got big laughs from his fellow Fox Sports MLB broadcasters.

While it’s impossible to know how a meeting between an all-time great pitcher and one of the best hitters of all time would go, it’s not hard at all to guess how Bonds thinks he’d do in that scenario.

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Barry Bonds offered a very moving tribute to the late Willie Mays, his godfather and mentor

Barry Bonds offered a wonderful tribute to the late Willie Mays, his godfather and mentor.

One MLB legend offered an incredibly moving tribute to another on Tuesday night.

All-time baseball player Willie Mays died on Tuesday at the age of 93, and fellow baseball titan Barry Bonds shared a very fond farewell to his godfather and mentor.

Mays played with Bonds’ father, Bobby Bonds, in San Francisco, and he became the younger Bonds’ godfather when the latter was born. As the younger Bonds also played for the Giants for most of his career, it set up an eternal link between Mays and the Bonds family.

After news of Mays’ death broke, Bonds took to social media to offer a very touching tribute to a towering figure for him professionally and personally.

“I am beyond devastated and overcome with emotion,” Bonds wrote on Instagram, adding a broken heart emoji. “I have no words to describe what you mean to me- you helped shape me to be who I am today.

“Thank you for being my Godfather and always being there. Give my dad a hug for me. Rest in peace Willie, I love you forever.”

https://www.instagram.com/p/C8YLsFMvPVi/

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Analytics compare Georgia baseball’s Charlie Condon to Barry Bonds

Charlie Condon in the same breath as Barry Bonds? Wes Johnson says so…

Charlie Condon is in the midst of one of the greatest seasons not only in Georgia baseball history, but also the history of college baseball as a whole.

Condon added to his NCAA record of home runs in a single season during Friday’s Athens Regional matchup against Army, crushing his 36th moonshot of the season. He also holds the UGA career records for both a single season and career (61).

As the Bulldogs continue to battle Army on Friday, SEC Network released a video piece surrounding Condon’s rise to stardom. UGA head coach Wes Johnson makes an appearance, and he goes on to tell an intriguing story about his conversation with a person regarding Condon’s analytics.

“We use analytical models,” Johnson said. “And the guy who started these models called me one day and said, ‘Hey, are we getting this data right?Like the only other guy we’ve had a model for was Barry Bonds. Like that’s the only other guy we’ve seen that’s comparable to him’.”

Barry Bonds is arguably the greatest hitter the sport of baseball has every witnessed. He holds the single-season home run record (73) and is first on the all-time MLB home runs list with 762. He also leads in position-WAR with 162.8, and his career slugging percentage of .606 ranks first among post-integration players.

Condon’s comparison to Bonds’ analytics only adds to his superstar mantra. Remind you, Condon came to Georgia as a preferred walk-on with no scholarship offers to his name. Whether the Bulldogs go on to beat Army and ultimately make Omaha or not, Condon is a sure-fire top MLB draft pick in 2024.

Aaron Judge is not the MLB single-season home run king. Sorry, Roger Maris Jr.

No matter how you feel, Barry Bonds is the single-season home run king until someone hits 74.

Barry Bonds is the MLB single-season home run king.

Want to know how I know Barry Bonds is the single-season home run king? Because I checked the Major League Baseball website, and there he was, number one on the list. Barry Bonds, 73 dingers.

So why then do I hear people bestowing this title on Aaron Judge, an incredible player in his own right, but very obviously not the home run king. Last I checked, he had 61 home runs, tied at seventh with Roger Maris. And I assume you knew this already, because his pursuit of 61 was well covered. ESPN even ticked off some college football fans by interrupting their game with live coverage of Judge’s at-bats.

So imagine my surprise when I heard Roger Maris Jr. say Judge “should be revered for being the actual single-season home run champ.” I almost spit out my lemonade. How did he get from 61 to 74 so fast?! But nope, never happened. I checked the MLB website again, and there was Bonds, still No. 1.

Maris Jr. was actually advocating for MLB to “look at the records and do something.” Apparently, he doesn’t think Bonds’ home run record should count due to the should-be Hall of Famers’ obvious ties to steroids. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, who hold all the records between one and seven, would be wiped from the records too. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think all of those incredible seasons were aided by performance-enhancing substances, but respectfully, Maris Jr. couldn’t be more wrong.

The time for MLB to do something — if it really wanted to — was more than two decades ago. If the league didn’t want these astronomical single-season numbers, it would have tested for steroids when it had the chance. But it did want those numbers, it benefitted from those numbers, it didn’t start testing until after Bonds set the record in 2001, and now it should be stuck with those numbers for the rest of time.

That includes the all-time record of 762 home runs that Bonds holds and many of us will never live to see broken. It’s a potentially flawed record, and that’s exactly why the league should never touch it, because the history of Major League Baseball is flawed. You can’t go back and erase something because you don’t like it. It happened already. Live with it.

If you don’t want to acknowledge Bonds’ record as a fan, fine, just say you think he cheated and keep it moving. But until Judge hits 73 home runs himself, he’ll never be the MLB home run king, because as far as the record books are concerned, he’s not. He’ll have to settle for being the American League home run king. And for a league that’s been around for more than a century, that’s really not so bad.

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Barry Bonds being intentionally walked with the bases loaded is a reminder he’s a Hall of Famer

That really happened.

Barry Bonds may not be in the Baseball Hall of Fame as of right now.

As absurd as that is, we don’t necessarily need him in Cooperstown to know what an all-time baseball great he was, arguably the greatest hitter ever to lace up spikes, and a home-run hitter for the ages.

On Wednesday, there was one video going around that was a reminder just how dominant he was. Back in 1998, the Arizona Diamondbacks were up 8-6 on the San Francisco Giants. The bases were loaded and there was Bonds striding up to the plate. The slugger was in the middle of an amazing season, although not an MVP year by his standards.

Still: The D-Backs chose to intentionally walk him. That’s right, they walked a run in instead of letting him swing the bat. Instead, they threw to Brent Mayne … and Buck Showalter’s move WORKED! Game over, Diamondbacks win.

But who else would be intentionally walked with the bases loaded? Exactly.

By the way, this is has been done since, for what it’s worth:

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The Baseball Hall of Fame is a silly museum that we should just continue to ignore

We don’t need a bitter voters to tell us who the great players were.

This is the online version of our daily newsletter, The Morning Win. Subscribe to get irreverent and incisive sports stories, delivered to your mailbox every morning.

The Baseball Hall of Fame is officially, and sadly, a joke.

Congratulations, baseball writers. You did it. You saved your little upstate New York museum and in doing so let everyone know you don’t really love the game, you just love having some power that you no longer deserve.

In cased you missed it, the 2022 Hall of Fame class was announced yesterday and it was made up of just one legendary baseball player – David Ortiz.

Left out of that class were some other legendary players, including Barry Bonds, Roger Clemens, and Sammy Sosa. Curt Schilling also didn’t get in and is now off the ballot.

While those first three didn’t make it because of their ties to performance enhancing drugs, Schilling was basically not voted in because of his personality and the things he has said and done in the past. I personally don’t like Schilling at all but the great Bomani Jones did recently make a good argument for why the former three-time World Series champ should have been voted in.

Not having those guys in the precious Hall of Fame makes the Hall of Fame a pointless place to visit or talk about it. It’s a sham and a waste of time because it’s a game of favorites picked by people who don’t care what you think, because level-headed people like you and I know that Bonds, Clemens, Sosa and yes, Schilling, deserve to be in that club.

Let’s stick with the steroid-era discussion, though. It’s easy to elect those guys and make a mention of what they did, or were suspected of doing, and allow them to be in the Hall of Fame. Everyone will be OK and the museum will remain standing.

Life will go on. Trust me!

Bonds is the home run king. Clemens is one of the best pitchers to ever take the mound. Sosa brought baseball back with that fun summer in which he and Mark McGwire chased Roger Maris’ home-run record.

Those legendary players are baseball and are big characters in the story of baseball, a story that can’t be told without them. They should all be in Cooperstown and they should have all been in the first time they were eligible.

Players who are in the Hall of Fame should stand up and boycott the silly museum until those former stars are put in, because without them there is a big stain on the reputation of the place, a stain that has been created by the writers who think they are doing the opposite of that.

Until that happens there’s really no point to visit the museum or talk about it or give it any serious thought. It’s a silly playground built by people who care more about themselves than the game that so many people love.

We know who deserves to be in and we don’t really need the voters to tell us who the great players were. We really don’t need Hall of Fames, to be honest. We saw those players play. We saw the incredible things that they did. We get it. We know.

Oh, and Jonathan Papelbon got 5 votes? Really?

LOL.

Quick hits: Awesome mic’d up video of Travis Kelce… Sean Payton/Kevin James jokes… NFL OT ideas… And more.

– This video of a mic’d up Travis Kelce during his game-winning touchdown on Sunday is too good.

– Sean Payton announced yesterday that he was leaving the Saints and everyone made jokes about Kevin James.

– NFL fans came up with a number of interesting ways to change the NFL’s overtime rules.

– Do you play Wordle? Here are 8 great starting words to use.

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