Barry Bonds - Biography

				Barry Bonds Biography   Name : Barry Bonds Profession : Baseball Player Birth Details : born July 24, 1964 in Riverside, California Birth name : Barry Lamar Bonds Height : 6' 2" (1.88 m) Spouse : Liz Watson (10 January 1998 - present) 3 children Susann Margreth (5 February 1988 - December 1994) (divorced)
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Barry Bonds Detailed Biography

Barry Lamar Bonds (born July 24, 1964 in Riverside, California) is a left fielder in Major League Baseball for the San Francisco Giants; he is most famous for his home run hitting. He holds the record for most homers in a season with 73 and is third on the career list with 708. Bonds told USA Today in February, 2006 that he plans to retire after the season with or without the all-time home run record. He is generally considered among the greatest players of all time, and has won a record seven MVP awards; for those who view baseball through the prism of sabermetrics, he, Babe Ruth, and Ted Williams are the top three hitters. He is the only player in history to have hit at least 400 home runs and stolen at least 400 bases, as well as the only player in history to hit 500 homeruns and steal 500 bases. He has won eight Gold Glove Awards for defensive excellence. However, he is the focus of a raging debate in the baseball world, centering on two questions: has he had help in the form of illegal performance-improving drugs, and if so, to what degree, if any, does the use of these drugs account for his accomplishments? This debate has been further fueled by reports of testimony given in the investigation of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative scandal. The son of former All-Star Bobby Bonds, Barry Bonds graduated in 1982 from Junipero Serra High School (San Mateo, Calif.), excelling in baseball, basketball and football. Although he was immediately drafted by the San Francisco Giants, Bonds chose to go to college first, playing baseball and earning a degree at Arizona State University in criminal justice. He began his major league career in 1986 with the Pittsburgh Pirates. In 1993, he left the Pirates to sign as a free agent with the Giants, for whom his father had played the first seven years of his career. Bonds' speed and power in his early and middle years recalled his father's abilities. Hall of Famer Willie Mays is his godfather; Reggie Jackson, another Hall of Famer, is his uncle. His aunt Rosie Bonds finished 8th in the Women's 80-meter hurdles (extended to 100-meter hurdles in 1971) at the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan. In Sports Illustrated (June 5, 2000), San Francisco Giant Shawon Dunston said of his teammate Bonds, "He's not going to hit 70 homers, but he believes he can. That's frightening." The next year, Bonds set the single-season home run record, hitting 73 to break Mark McGwire's 70-homer mark set in 1998. Some analysts consider Bonds' 2001 performance among the greatest hitting seasons in history. Besides the home run record, he set single-season marks for walks (177) and slugging percentage (.863) (topping Ruth's records of 170 and .847, set in 1923 and 1920, respectively). In 2002, however, he did not repeat his 73-homer feat. Partly because pitchers tried to "pitch around" him whenever possible, he bettered his own record for walks with 198, which contributed greatly to a .582 on-base percentage, breaking Williams' 1941 record of .551. He also won the National League batting title with a .370 average, becoming the oldest player to win the honor for the first time. In 2004, he won his second batting title with a .362 average. He also broke two of his own records: OPS, with 1.422, and on-base percentage with .609 - the only time a player has bettered .600 over a full season. Bonds has been voted the National League's Most Valuable Player a record seven times, in 1990, 1992, 1993, 2001, 2002, 2003, and 2004. He is the first player in history to be MVP in four or even three consecutive years, and no other player has won the award more than three times. He was also second in the voting for the award twice: in 1991 to Terry Pendleton of the Atlanta Braves, and in 2000 to then-teammate Jeff Kent. During the 2002 season, Bonds became the fourth man to hit 600 career home runs, and also set the record for most home runs hit in a single post-season (8). The Giants would lose the World Series that year to the Anaheim Angels, four games to three. Bonds' eight Gold Glove awards as an outfielder are the third-most ever for that position. He has been named to 13 National League All-Star teams: 1990, 1992-1998, 2000-2004. Bonds became the first 400-400 player (400 home runs and 400 stolen bases) on August 23, 1998, when he hit home run number 400 off of Florida's Kirt Ojala. He had stolen his 400th base on July 26, 1997 against the Pittsburgh Pirates at Candlestick Park. On June 23, 2003, Bonds recorded his 500th stolen base in the eleventh inning of a game against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Pacific Bell Park. Bonds later scored the winning run. By chance, his ailing father Bobby was in attendance that night. With 633 career home runs at the time, Bonds became the first 500-500 player in baseball history, already the only member of the 400-400 club. In addition, in 1996 Bonds became the second of the three current members of the so called 40-40 club: 40 home runs and 40 stolen bases in one season. The other two members are José Canseco and Alex Rodriguez. Bonds is among the power hitters who "crowd the plate": standing in such a way that his body is almost over the plate (and thus close to the strike zone). Because of Bonds and others like Mo Vaughn, in 2001 Major League Baseball instructed umpires to call a slightly different strike zone, calling more high inside pitches strikes. The new regulations also banned hitters from using hard protective gear apart from helmets (e.g., hard elbow or chest guards), which enabled them to get closer to the plate. On April 12, 2004, Bonds hit his 660th home run, tying him with his godfather Willie Mays for 3rd on the all-time career home run list in a game against the Milwaukee Brewers at SBC Park. Larry Ellison (not the CEO of Oracle Corporation) caught the home run and returned it to Barry. He hit his 661st home run at the same venue the next day, April 13, placing him in outright third behind Babe Ruth (714) and Hank Aaron (755). Ellison also caught number 661, but kept it for himself with Barry's blessing. (Ellison was in a kayak in McCovey Cove, an arm of San Francisco Bay that lies behind the right-field stands at SBC Park, so this wasn't quite the amazing coincidence it appears at first sight.) On July 4, 2004, Bonds passed Rickey Henderson to take the lead in career walks, with his 2191st. Later in 2004, he broke his own single-season record for walks, becoming the first player with over 200 in a season and ending the season with 232. His total of 232 walks was 105 more than the next closest leader, Lance Berkman, Todd Helton, and Bobby Abreu who all had 127. Included in Bonds' 2004 total were 120 intentional walks, the most issued since MLB began recording them separately in 1954. Bonds also has the 2nd- and 3rd-highest single-season intentional walk totals, with 68 in 2002 and 61 in 2003. He has been the league leader in the category for 13 of the past 14 seasons. Bonds holds almost every major league record in existence for intentional walks with four in a nine-inning game (2004), 120 in a season (2004) and 604 in his career (more than the next two players on the all-time list, Hank Aaron and Willie McCovey, combined). Bonds, a prolific home run hitter, is an easy candidate for the intentional walk. In the first month of the 2004 season, Bonds drew 43 walks, 22 of them intentional. He broke his previous record of 68 intentional walks, set in 2002, on July 10, 2004 in his last appearance before the All-Star break. On May 28, 1998, Bonds became one of only four players in major league history to be intentionally walked with the bases loaded, when the Arizona Diamondbacks elected to give up a run and face catcher Brent Mayne instead. On September 17, 2004, Bonds hit his 700th home run off San Diego Padres pitcher Jake Peavy in San Francisco and became only the third man to achieve the 700 home run plateau. 73rd Homerun Ball Controversy After the homerun on Oct. 7, 2001 two men laid claim to ownership of the baseball. Alex Popov claimed he was the first person to get a glove on the baseball only to have it taken away in the ensuing scuffle. Patrick Hayashi said he found it rolling free in the minute-long melee. Ultimately Superior Court Judge Kevin McCarthy considered arguments based on old whaling laws, precedent-setting fox hunting cases, and laws about abandoned property. He even convened a summit of experts, during which the case law was applied to the legal quandary: Just what constitutes possession of a baseball that lands in the stands? In the end, McCarthy issued a Dec. 28, 2002 ruling that stated: Since Popov did briefly have control of the ball, and since Hayashi ultimately ended up with it and could not be shown to have caused Popov to lose it, both men, said McCarthy, had "equal claim under the law." Several experts estimated the ball to be worth around $1.5 Million. In the end Comic book creator and producer Todd McFarlane, paid $450,000 for the ball at an auction. The Proceeds were then split between Popov and Hayashi.