Barry Bonds turned home runs into pieces of art

Sunday’s Say Hey, Baseball talks about how Barry Bonds was the Rembrandt of smacking dingers. Plus, Ramon Laureano gifts us with what has to be the defensive play of the year.

Anytime I have an excuse to talk about the legend of Barry Bonds and his baseball career, I’m going to take it. Now is as good of a time as ever to discuss at least a small part of it, since the Giants chose to celebrate his career by retiring his number on Saturday night. The list of various luminaries who were at AT&T Park either in person or via recorded messages read like a veritable Who’s Who of not only Giants history but baseball and sports history, itself. However, the coolest thing on display happened to be just outside of the ballpark.

In fact, they weren’t even on solid ground. The team decided to mark the occasion by placing floating balloon baseballs in McCovey Cove. There were 35 of them, with each one placed at or near the location of all 35 of Bonds’ Splash Hits into the Cove. One of the cool things about this sport is the fact that there are numbers and statistics for everything and so of course, they have kept track of each of the Splash Hits and it’s just plain crazy that Bonds has nearly half of all Giants Splash Hits in the history of that ballpark and he’s been retired since 2007.

The 35 Splash Hits basically encapsulates my favorite thing about Barry Bonds as a hitter, which was the fact that he could turn home runs into utter spectacles. There was the time when he tried to send a ball from the Bronx into Connecticut and there was also that time later in the same season’s World Series when he tried to hit a ball from Anaheim into the nearby Santa Ana River — the latter of which forced even Tim Salmon to admit that he was in awe.

While there are still plenty of beautiful home runs being hit right now, there’s just nothing like the terrifying combination of Bonds’ perfect swing with the frightening power that he put behind those homers that you just don’t see as much today. It was as if he was trying to take us all on a grand tour of the stadium with each of his longest homers and we’ll be lucky if we see this routine display of homer artistry again.

• Remember when Yoenis Cespedes unleashed one of the biggest and baddest throws you have ever seen in order to nab an Angels runner at the plate? Well, say hello to Ramon Laureano. He not only topped that feat with an absolutely astonishing throw, but also did it for the same team in the same ballpark as Cespedes did.
• For the second night in a row, Ryan McMahon came through big-time for the Rockies. This time, his walk-off homer was what doomed the Dodgers to defeat and made things even closer out in the NL West.
• Felix Hernandez has recently been relegated to Seattle’s bullpen. Something is clearly wrong with the former Mariners ace, but our friends at Fish Stripes (yes, the Marlins blog) have ideas on how to fix the exiled King.

• While we’re on the subject of pitchers who are having issues in 2018, what’s up with Corey Knebel?
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• Not every rookie can come in and tear it up. For the Phillies, Scott Kingery fits that bill and even though Philly is in a playoff race, they should still show some patience with Kingery.
• Speaking of rookies, the Braves have yet another one of their highly-touted pitching prospects arriving imminently. This time, it’s Touki Tousssaint.
• The Royals haven’t had the best luck when it comes to trades, and the deal that sent Jose Martinez to St. Louis was one to forget. However, Royals Review is taking time to remember it, since learning from the past is the best way to prepare for the future.
• The A’s bolstered their bullpen with the addition of Fernando Rodney — or so we think? Was this actually a case of the team creating new problems instead of fixing them?