Posts tagged BarryBonds at FanHouse

"Mr. Longoria! Do you think that the 2008 Rays are the 69 Mets in disguise?"
"I don't know, but do you want to see my impression of the 2007 Mets?"
"Sure!"
"/collapses"

Cinderella's glass slipper has broken. Snow White is comatose and being cared for by dwarves. Gaston is trying to stab the Beast to death. Whatever your comparison, the Rays have hit a snag and are down with one crucial injury after another with only a few games keeping them on top of the division. The baseball world watches with anticipation to see if the team can hold together and overcome the odds.

What are the Rays going to do? Who will fill those holes in the lineup? Can you type on the Internet with a broken wrist? Do the Rays have anything to do with free agency? These questions and more (slightly more) in tonight's Dugout, after the jump.

Los Angeles Dodgers second baseman Jeff Kent has never been known as the most congenial guy on the planet. If I were to describe Jeff's personality in one word, well, one word that I can use here, I'd take cantankerous. The dude just gets mad at everything. He's like the old man next door always yelling at you to get off his lawn or turn the damn music down.

Jeff's fought with teammates, most memorably Barry Bonds, and has a general disdain of all things media. One member of the media that's generally been considered untouchable though is Dodgers play-by-play man and living legend Vin Scully.

Well, like a lot of people following the Dodgers, Scully has said during Dodgers games that Kent hitting third in front of the newly acquired Manny Ramirez has really helped Jeff out. Well, after Jeff talked to the T.J. Simers about what Vin and others have been saying, Scully was no longer untouchable.

"Vin Scully talks too much," Kent said.

Now that's funny, the guy who normally doesn't say much, this time saying way too much.

Somebody, anybody, give Barry Bonds a job. He's an interesting character. He'll bring fans into the stadium and sell merchandise. He'll hit you at least 20 homeruns in your DH or "bench" positions. The steroids and the media circus might be a detraction, but hey, you could add Amy Winehouse to your 40-man roster and get more production in the heat of constant scandal than you'd get from, say, Andy Marte. Andy Marte couldn't hit .200 if he had all season. Barry could probably do it in one game!

Whether or not he's good for baseball is irrelevant. He's good for The Dugout. MLB, pretend you're the NBA for a minute and put him on whatever team needs "stars." While you're at it, put Pete Rose in the Hall of Fame. And come up with about 12 new words that rhyme with "stained" or "game."

Is Barry Bonds retired? I'm not sure! Let's ask him! Tonight's Dugout is after the jump.

(spoiler: no)

As soon as Carlos Lee went down yesterday, the "Barry Bonds to Houston" rumors started swirling. Given their position on the periphery of the Wild Card race and Ed Wade's, "Never say day even if there hasn't been a pulse for a month" attitude, they just seem to be a logical fit. They denied interest in him this morning, but that means almost nothing. Now Cecil Cooper is threatening to quit if the Astros sign Bonds. From Richard Justice's blog at the Houston Chronicle: ''Bonds is not a fit for us. If he would come, I would go. I wouldn't want to deal with it.''

I started to talk about this in my post this morning (linked above), but I'll expand. Cecil Cooper is wrong. The Astros organization, as currently assembled with no actual minor league prospects, is completely screwed for the future. They're teetering on the edge of Pirates/Royals level oblivion. They are currently eight games behind an inconsistent Brewers team for the NL Wild Card. That's a hot streak and a Ben Sheets injury away from being interesting.

If they don't contend this year, it's not happening again until at least three years after Wade is fired (you can write that down). Wade's plan is horribly misguided and foolish, but if he's putting all of his eggs in one basket then he should fill the basket. Bonds is free, in terms of talent needed to acquire him, and cheap in terms of money. He's a better hitter than anyone the Astros have in their organization, and they're probably the only team interested. It's admirable that Cooper is willing to stand his ground, but Bonds is his best chance at making the playoffs as the Astros manager.

Ed Wade and the Astros have been doing some crazy things this year in the name of the pennant race that only they know they're in. At the trade deadline they picked up Randy Wolf and LaTroy Hawkins despite being below .500 and down by double digits in the Wild Card race. Now that they're above .500 and have cut the Brewers lead to 8.5 games, they lose Carlos Lee for the season to a broken pinkie. The only real solution left would be Barry Bonds, but even they wouldn't, would they? The Astros say they're not interested:

"I don't see us pursuing that," Wade said Sunday.

[...]

"I don't think that's a possibility," manager Cecil Cooper said. "Not that he's not a good player, (but) I don't think that's someone we're interested in."

I've made fun of Wade's awful work all year and I'm going to do it again. He's dug his team so deeply into the ground, that the only thing that even makes sense right now is to sign Bonds and hope he gets them into the playoffs. Bonds would actually be the least damaging of all of Wade's moves, because he wouldn't cost them anything in terms of prospects. If you're going to go all-out, you'd better go all the way out or you're just hurting your team.

They're called the dog days of August for a reason. With the trade deadline in the books, major league teams are, barring a waiver trade, stuck with what they've got on the roster for the duration of the regular season. That means injuries, like the one suffered by Arizona's Orlando Hudson in the photo to the right, will shape the pennant races much more than they have over the last four months.

Five teams in the hunt for a playoff spot got bad injury news in the last 24 hours. Here's a look at who's hurt and how each team will cope with the absence of a key player over the final seven weeks.

- Carl Crawford, LF, Rays: The speedy Tampa Bay outfielder injured a tendon in his right middle finger on a check swing last night and was placed on the 15-day DL. The Rays are unsure how much time he'll miss, but a Seattle trainer told him he could miss six-to-eight weeks. If he's out that long, it could be devastating to their chances of holding off Boston in the AL East.

If there's one thing someone like Barry Bonds (or, say, Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro or Paul Lo Duca, to name a few) should never, ever, ever, ever be give the authority to do, it is influence young, impressionable baseball playing men.

But Barry, via LBS, thinks for some reason, should be decide to actually give up the pipe dream of getting another gig with a baseball team, that he might want to become a coach of a college baseball team. And he told the public this at the Giants 50th anniversary celebration (seen above).

I think the best position for me would probably be in a college - that's how I feel. I'd rather teach kids what they want to do and what to do to get to the major leagues. I see myself doing something like that moreso than doing something in the major leagues if that time comes for me to make that decision.

Yeah. And maybe Jeffrey Dahmer should have gotten a job with Emeril or Jesse James with BB&T. All seem like logical choices, historical hindsight be damned.

Then again, Barry Lamar is a pretty damn good hitter and if he has somehow managed to learn his lesson about bending the rules to get ahead, then he could prove a pretty good physical and moral mentor to students. But for the moment, well, maybe we should hold off on that.

When the Houston Astros decided to be buyers at the trade deadline, it was somewhat confusing. The Astros were 50-57 on July 31, in fifth place in the NL Central, and trailing the Cubs by 14 games. In the wild card race, they trailed Milwaukee by nine games. It was pretty obvious to anyone with half a clue that the odds of the Astros overtaking either team, especially after they'd each added a top line pitcher to their rotation, were somewhere between slim and none.

This did not faze Ed Wade, however, as he made the deals anyway in hopes of helping Houston reach the post-season. To their credit, the Astros have played pretty well lately. They've won seven of nine since the deadline, but they still find themselves 12.5 games behind the Cubs and 8.5 behind Milwaukee. If that isn't enough to help the team realize that 2008 just won't be the year, maybe this will do the trick. Carlos Lee is likely done for the season after breaking his pinky finger.

Lee was hit by a pitch thrown by Bronson Arroyo in the third inning of the Astros' 3-1 win over the Cincinnati Reds. He left the game immediately to be taken for X-rays.

"I knew right away it was not going to be good," Lee said. "It hit me square. It's a bad deal, but what can I do? They said six to eight weeks, so probably I'm out (for the season). Unless the guys make a comeback and I'll be back for the playoffs."

Though if the Astros still don't want to give up, I hear that some guy named Barry Bonds might be available.

On Deck is FanHouse's look at the day's most intriguing baseball matchups.

Los Angeles Dodgers (58-58) at San Francisco Giants (49-66) 4:05 PM ET

Barry Bonds returned to the Giants last night. Somewhat.

He made a surprise appearance at a celebration of the Giants best outfielders of the last 50 seasons as part of their anniversary season in San Francisco. He made a Schwarzenegger type "I'll be back" proclamation when he stood at the podium, pointed at Joe Torre and said: "You heard me Torre, I beat you before and I can beat you again. I haven't retired. Thank you."

Could Barry Bonds make another surprise appearance at the ballpark today? As a pinch hitter? Somehow, I doubt Torre is worried with the Giants eight and a half behind them.

Do you remember where you were one year ago? I was on my aunt's couch in Aiken, South Carolina enjoying the air conditioning after spending a day in the 105 degree heat, watching the Pirates play the Diamondbacks on my computer. My brother was watching SportsCenter on my aunt's TV as the clock crawled past midnight. As they'd been doing all week, ESPN cut away from SC to play Barry Bonds' at-bat live. That meant that I got to watch the player I'd grown to loathe as a Pirate fan hit his 756th home run off of Mike Bacsik, along with the message from Hank Aaron and the truly touching speech from Bonds made with his godfather, Willie Mays, at his side.

Like everyone else, we here at FanHouse went crazy posting Bonds news and opinions. We made at least six posts on Bonds alone in twelve hours after his record-setting homer. One year later, you have to scour the internet for a reminder that this is the one year anniversary of the most sacred record in American sports being broken.

In the year since Bonds broke Hank Aaron's record, the Mitchell Report broke and the Roger Clemens circus started while Bonds has essentially been strong-armed out of the game by owners not willing to put up with the media circus that constantly surrounds him. Rather than deal with their problems, baseball seems content to use Bonds and Clemens as scapegoats and merely erase them from the public mind.

Barry Bonds never existed. Roger Clemens never existed. Steroids never existed. Move along with your life. Please take note of the rainbow in the sky, but not the flood rushing towards you.