The rarest of baseball happenings….
June 18th, 2007 by Gonzo
During Saturday’s Giants-Sox game, I saw something I have NEVER seen before in baseball. Ever.
No, I’m not talking about a perfect game. Or an unassisted Triple play. Or someone hitting for the cycle. Or a 4 home run game.
What did I witness? I saw Barry Bonds called out on strikes, without swinging the bat. Once.
I’ve seen him not swing during an intentional walk, of course. And during one of those ”unintentional” intentional walks. And I saw even him take strike 3 in game 2 of the 2000 playoffs against the Mets. But to not swing once at 3 straight strikes?
I’ve seen probably 3000 of his at-bats since I moved out here in ‘96 - and all I can say is WOW!
Just wow.
June 19th, 2007 at 9:33 am
I missed that - but what I did notice was a relatively congenial Bonds during weekend interviews (and I expect we would’ve seen any video of the opposite, ad nauseum, were it available). Given what he’d said in the past about Boston (um… less than positive), he closed the weekend with something resembling complimentary statements of the ballpark, city, etc.
Also, consensus seems to be that the fans weren’t as vitriolic as expected - though in fairness, expectations may have been unrealistic… as there was a good amount of booing, signs, taunting, etc.
I’m not suggesting this is a rare baseball happening, but Bonds played the media circus about as well as he could this past weekend - and even eventually hit a HR to shut up (some of) the fans. I can’t figure out if (a) the Boston media was “soft” on Bonds out of respect, awe, fear, whatever, (b) Bonds didn’t give anyone anything negative to focus on this weekend, or (c) Bonds has been hammered so often and so much that there’s only so much that can be done so in a vacuum, it would appear he had a “tough” weekend, but all the crap surrounding him is getting old so we’re all inured to it… or just plain bored by it. I dunno.