Hit tip to Eddy Spaghetti for emailing me this story over the weekend.
Could Barry Bonds be making a return to the Pirates? If a certain black-opinion online magazine has its way, the pariah would finish his career in Pittsburgh for the veteran-minimum salary.
Now, the article was written by Martin Johnson, a man I can find no online information about, so I can only assume he’s a random freelancer. However he does make some valid points. Bonds has made $188 million+ in the MLB throughout his career. A drastic pay-cut from the $15 mil he made last year would certainly cause the public to think differently about him (if that’s even on his mind…which I doubt it is).
And Johnson has this to say as well:
In returning to Pittsburgh, Bonds would be honoring a tradition of home run champions. Hank Aaron rather famously broke Babe Ruth’s record playing for the Atlanta Braves, but Hammerin’ Hank spent the final two years of his career back where it began, in Milwaukee. Babe Ruth may have built Yankee Stadium as the saying goes, and he started his career with the Boston Red Sox, but he hit the last six of his 714 home runs as a member of the Boston Braves in 1935.
Well said. Yes, he’s always been a Cali kid, watching his dad and uncle play, going to high school at Serra, leaving his first major-league team for serious cash in San Fran. However, with the steroids eye now firmly planted on Roger Clemens, Bonds could easily reclaim the love lost when the steroids issues started circling around his name by returning to Pittsburgh. Yeah, the Steel City isn’t as forgiving as ‘Frisco, but Bonds would be playing on a team that hasn’t won since he last put on said team’s uniform. As Ed Spags said in his email:
…honestly, at his point, I would root for Bonds in a second. I want to see a .500 season before I die…
I’m sure a number of Pirates fans feel the same…or at least share a smidgen of those thoughts. Johnson explains that a Bonds signing could set our young player development back a year or two, but its not like our development practices have been foolproof since Bonds left. What harm could another year do?
And last I checked…he’s available.
