David Wadler’s Assorted Thoughts

In the case of Barry Bonds’s personal trainer, Greg Anderson, the price is time in jail…again. This time, however, Anderson faces up to 16 months behind bars. Jeff Pearlman, who wrote Love Me, Hate Me: Barry Bonds and the Making of an Antihero, suggests that Bonds is “an evil man. A truly evil man.”  I don’t think his insolence, selfishness, and dishonesty rise to that level, but Bonds certainly doesn’t seem like a very good friend.

MSNBC’s Mike Celizic had this to say about the slumping Alex Rodriguez:
“He’s shot. Toast. Finished as a Yankee, and there’s no sense pretending he can come back and be the man he was advertised to be.” Defensively, A-Rod has had a trying season. And offensively, he struggled in June, but has rebounded with a .932 OPS in July (through July 27). Rodriguez remains one of baseball’s elite players. Celizic’s assertions are patently absurd. Anyone can have a bad day, month, or — in Celizic’s case — column.

I’ve heard it argued that Nathan’s hot dog eating champion, Takeru Kobayashi, is the most dominant “athlete” relative to his competition in any “sport.” If you have the stomach to watch this year’s contest, you might catch a glimpse of Joey Chestnut, who recently ate 50 hot dogs and buns in 12 minutes, as he tries to bring the title back to the U.S. Pepto Bismal anyone?

I’ve often heard the argument that Barry Bonds is worthy of induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame because of what he accomplished before he allegedly began using performance-enhancing drugs. This begs several questions, one of which is “What would his numbers look like if were clean?” I’ve wanted to do this analysis for some time, but have been too busy/lazy to sit down and hash it out. Fortunately, Peter Keating did it for me. In an ESPN excerpt of the Keating’s book, ESPN Dingers - A Short History Of The Long Ball, clean Bonds checks in at the end of the 2005 season 74 homeruns short of where he actually stood. He loses 73 RBI, 12 points off of his batting average, and doubtless takes a hit on his on-base percentage and slugging percentage as well. Hall-worthy numbers? Absolutely. Keating writes, “Bonds’ first 15 seasons make him one of the three best left fielders in history; his next four would make him one of the three best players in history. Too bad we can no longer take them seriously.” Too bad indeed.