The cat was officially out of the bag on October 20th, 2002 at approximately 11:53 pm central daylight time. In a sudden enlightening moment I realized that we as sports fans had been duped. We naively sat back and took it all in, oblivious to the strange game baseball had become. As long as it remained exciting we just turned the other cheek. Nothing was wrong. Nothing was suspicious about every single season home run record being smashed between 1998 and 2001. We thought nothing of it. That was until Barry Bonds dug into the batters box in the 9th inning of Game 2 during the 2002 World Series.
There was something odd about Barry Bonds in 2001 and 2002. Already an all time great, Bonds had made a stylistic change to his approach as he hit his late 30’s. At an age when players typically became more scrappy and less powerful, Bonds had bulked up and become a left handed power hitter that could absolutely crank anything left out over the plate. He choked up, strapped an armored plate on his right elbow and stood on top of the plate. Pitching inside was out of the question with his protected elbow hanging out over the inner edge. Bonds was a damn good hitter too and a patient one at that. Rarely did he chase anything out of the zone. His batting eye was unmatched in the history of baseball. The combination of his patience, his increased power and the out of this world natural ability gave us the perfect storm in 2001 and 2002.
As well as smashing the single season home run record, Bonds also obliterated Babe Ruth’s on base percentage record and set the single season record for walks (intentionally and unintentional). You simply could not pitch to the man. Any mistake over the top half of the strike zone he could pull with that short compact lefty swing. In 1993 those hits were gapers. In 2001 and 2002 they flew into the Pacific Ocean.
In “Game of Shadows” San Fransico Chronicle beat writers described Bonds in 2001 as having a “metallic” sound to his bat. The sound of the ball coming off of his bat in spring training that year stopped grizzled baseball veterans in their tracks.
“What in the world is that?” people said that had been around the game for decades.
“It’s Bonds. He really hit the weights this winter,” was the general reply. Technically this was true. Still, nobody thought the new Bonds was using drugs to intensify his workouts.
Bonds swung a big stick. Literally. 33 ounces of black maple. He swung it hard too. With the bat speed he generated during those years the collision between bat and ball was unusually violent. Rather than metallic, I thought the moment of impact sounded like a tree snapping in two during a tornado or lightning storm. He could whip that bat through the strike zone with unreal speed. Short and compact. Always making perfect contact. Never swinging at bad pitches. The blend of natural ability and strength was at its apex. Baseball had not seen a monster like this before.
The trajectory of Bonds’ home runs always fascinated me. After the violent swing the ball would disappear and leave behind a puff of dust. It would exit the park at a rapid pace as a low flying line drive that somehow would gain altitude the further it flew. Just like a plane taking flight, Bonds home runs were a marvel of physics. One moment forever changed my thinking of the Barry Bonds home run. On October 20th 2002, with one pitch and one swing I could no longer accept what I saw as real. Something was wrong. Something was terribly wrong.
It was a perfect night in southern California on October 20th 2002. 72 degrees. Slight breeze from the west. Edison Field sparkled under the bright lights of the World Series. Anaheim held a 11-9 lead heading into the top of the 9th and was poised to tie the series at one a piece before flying to San Francisco. Most of the country was in bed as the clock approached 1 am on this Sunday night. Angles closer Troy Percival entered the game and prepared to face the Giants 2-3-4 hitters (Aurilla, Kent and Bonds, three accused steroid users).
Joe Buck and Tim McCarver commented matter a factly about the number of long balls in the post season. Nothing was unusual about it. That was how baseball was at the time. The blindfold was about to be removed.
Percival shut down Rich Aurilla with a quick two pitch at bat getting him to fly out to left field. Jeff Kent stepped to the plate and the ominous figure of Barry Bonds cast a long shadow in the on deck circle. Fox camera’s zoomed in on the hulking Bonds as Kent fouled off the 0-2 offering from Percival. He stood motionless. A badly out of style crucifix earring dangled from his left earlobe. His head appeared too big for the helmet he wore. A massive chest seemed ready to burst the buttons off of his jersey. And then his turn came.
Kent had hit a short fly ball that was easily handled by Angels left fielder Garret Anderson. Up marched Bonds. He was ridiculously dangerous in 2002. The choice was yours. Walk him or give up a home run. It was almost as simple as that. You could give him first base or take a chance and pitch to him. If you took a chance the odds of watching your pitch fly over the right field wall were very high. He was deadly patient as well. Bonds wouldn’t reach for anything. Of the 112 pitches he saw during the 2002 World Series only 39 were strikes. He swung at 25 of them.
Leading by two runs and with no one on base, the Angles would take their chances on getting Bonds for the third and final out. Managers often play the “worst case scenario” card. With Bonds at the dish, the worst case scenario often became reality.
Bonds bore in on the inner half of the plate as he awaited the first pitch from Percival. This was the rule in baseball during that era. The inner half belonged to Bonds. Might as well not challenge him there. The first pitch missed the zone as Bonds didn’t even bother to follow the ball to the catcher’s glove. He didn’t need to. His eye was so impeccable he could instantly sense where a pitch was going the moment it left the pitchers hand.
What happened next was akin to someone telling you that your life had been make believe for the previous 5 years. Everything you thought to be true you found to be a lie in one dramatic moment.
Barry focused intensely on Percival as he prepared to face the second pitch. His eyes unblinking. The bat gently waving behind his back shoulder. Arms in perfect position to uncoil a swing on any mistake over the plate. On the second pitch from Percival, during the 9th inning of an almost out of reach game, that mistake came and the steroid era was finally exposed.
Bonds turned on the fastball and caught it right on the sweet spot of the bat. Arms fully extended. Hips, shoulders and wrists all working in perfect synch to create the most viscous swing ever unleashed in the 130 year history of baseball.
The ball rocketed off of the bat unlike anything seen before. It was unnatural. Bonds had sent the ball into orbit. The ball behaved like a golf ball hit by an aluminum bat swung at a humanly impossible speed. It rose so quickly that Fox camera’s couldn’t pick it up as it soared into the exosphere. The herky jerky camera shot gave the impression that Bonds had hit the ball so far and so hard that it had left the ballpark too fast for the human eye to detect it. As of 2010 NASA scientists have never confirmed that the baseball ever landed. It most likely still orbits the earth.
Bonds started towards first watching the ball disappear into the distance. His typical home run trot began with him walking the first several steps. On this night it was different. He broke out into an almost sheepish jog as if he was thinking,
“Whoops, didn’t mean to show them that. Now they might think something is up”.
Percival turned and scanned the upper deck for remnants of the ball. Fox microphones picked up Angels outfielder Tim Salmon gasping in horror and saying “That’s the furthest ball I ever saw hit”. Tim wasn’t the only one.
Incredible moments during sporting events often make me stand. A running back breaks 5 tackles and out sprints the defense to the endzone. A basketball player makes an acrobatic layup. A golfer chips in for eagle. I stand for these things. I stood for Bonds but this time was different. I stared back at the TV as Bonds rounded the bases with a questioning scowl. Something wasn’t right. A baseball isn’t supposed to fly off the bat like that. I’d seen hundreds, let’s say thousands of batted balls during my 20 years and up to that point none of them looked like a racquet ball hit with a metal bat. A baseball is dense and weighted down. It would take incredible strength and bat speed to propel a ball like that. The kind of strength not seen until the previous 5 years. Mark McGwire had similar strength. Sammy Sosa had incredible bat speed. But Bonds? What I just witnessed was supernatural. Something fishy was amidst.
Then it hit me. 70, 66, 65, 67 and 73. The top 5 single season home run totals. All of these figures belonged to McGwire, Sosa and Bonds. They’d been fooling me. Was it pure coincidence that these records all were set during a 4 year period by the same 3 men? Why was the record never approached for 50 years and then suddenly it was assaulted multiple times from 1998 to 2001. It couldn’t be coincidental. They had to be cheating. I didn’t know why or even how, but as Bonds’ home run reached escape velocity that night I knew.
Footnotes :
*MLB has kind of swept this moment under the rug. Sure it was a fairly meaningless run in a game the Angels won in the next at bat, but I thought it was so remarkable it’s at least worth taking a second look at.
*Video of this home run exists on MLB.com but is somewhat hard to come by. I’m stealing a line from Bill Simmons here but it fits so perfectly I have to use it. “Major League Baseball doesn't allow online clips -- and really, why would they want fans to enjoy the history of the game online?
*I have somewhat of a conspiracy theory when it comes to Bonds’ game two home run. It was so ridiculous and so unnatural that Bud Selig held an emergency late night meeting in Los Angeles that night. During the meeting he says that Bonds’ steroid abuse is out of control. He’s now able to hit baseballs so hard that they challenge the laws of physics. He phones ESPN and tells them to replay the home run only once and to write it off as a meaningless play. The focus of SportsCenter that night must be the Angles victory. ESPN execs agree. Selig hopes that with time memory of this home run will fade. Now if only the entire steroid era could just fade away as well.
*Bonds’ power hitting was so amazing during that World Series that people often confuse the home run that never landed in game 2 with the OTHER monster home run he hit in game 6 off of K-Rod. The only real difference is that you can actually see the game 6 home run land and bounce down a tunnel in right field. MLB.com even provides a free link to the game 6 home run but barely acknowledges the game 2 home run with video evidence. Hmmmm.
*Let’s look at some of the all time records Bonds broke during the 2002 World Series.
Reached base 21 times in 30 plate appearances.
Only made 9 outs the ENTIRE series
.700 OBP all time record for a World Series .625 was previous record. Remember a .450 OBP is considered good.
Walked 13 times in 7 games. 7 times intentionally.
8 for 17 .471 4 HRs
Slugged 1.294 previous record was .913
All of that and he still only got one World Series MVP vote. Voting a player on the losing team MVP is basically a discontinued practice in modern day. This was one time an exception should have been made.
to it and they were about to win a ws game
