Despite the many controversies surrounding him, one can not deny that Giants legend Barry Bonds was one of a kind baseball player. Coincidentally or not, at the same time when Bonds flourished in his career, performance-enhancing drugs had been slowly creeping up in Major League Baseball. Hence, when in 1998, Bonds became the only player in MLB history ever to have 400 home runs with 400 stolen bases, his accomplishment was overshadowed by the home runs made by steroid-using former athlete Sammy Sosa. At the same time, Bonds also got stung by a comparison to Sosa which irked him to his core.
To this day, no player has reached 400/400, whilst Bonds has broken his own record by reaching 500/500. And this achievement of his was met with silence as compared to Sosa, who hit 66 home runs that year. Hence, getting compared to Sosa was a pretty big blow to Bonds. The same and many other things are mentioned in the book, Love Me, Hate Me, a book by Jeff Pearlman about the look into the life and career of Bonds.
Barry Bonds got stung by his own teammate!
Out of the many things that the Giants legend was known for, one thing was his being extremely self-centered. The former baseball player never got along with his teammates and demanded that others look up to him on a higher level. Also, no matter how he played, he saw him as the best and wanted the same from everybody. Maybe that’s why after achieving an incredible feat of 400/400, his own teammates didn’t like him.
At the time when Bonds’s feat of entering a club that no player had joined until now was getting overshadowed by Sosa and Mark McGwire, Giants’ baseman Charlie Hayes took a shot at him. As written in the book, Hayes would openly taunt him by saying, “I’ve got Sammy Sosa’s autograph, and it’s worth a helluva lot more than yours! Hell, you won’t even sign a baseball for me! But f*ck, I don’t care! You see how far Sammy hits that ball! See how far! He’s the best!”
Bonds’ arrogance was acceptable to a point. It was because achieving something that nobody had done before was a milestone that certainly didn’t warrant silence.
In the end, steroids caught up to Bonds!
The BALCO and MLB testing records reflected Bonds’ usage of performance-enhancing drugs from 2001-06. However, a couple of years before that, Bonds also admitted to taking steroids. According to him, it was after his personal trainer misled him into believing he was taking flaxseeds and arthritis cream. The earliest known offense of Bonds came in the year 1998 when he hit 400/400. It seems that, like Sosa, Bonds’ accomplishments might have also been rigged with steroids.
Bonds swore he did not take steroids on purpose. But his admittance and connection to the same are what kept him from being a Hall of Famer.
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What do you think of Hayes bluntly mocking Bonds with Sammy Sosa’s comments? Let us know in the comments below!
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