The cat was officially out of the bag on October 20th, 2002 at approximately 11:53 pm central daylight time. In a sudden enlightening moment I realized that we as sports fans had been duped. We naively sat back and took it all in, oblivious to the strange game baseball had become. As long as it remained exciting we just turned the other cheek. Nothing was wrong. Nothing was suspicious about every single season home run record being smashed between 1998 and 2001. We thought nothing of it. That was until Barry Bonds dug into the batters box in the 9th inning of Game 2 during the 2002 World Series.
There was something odd about Barry Bonds in 2001 and 2002. Already an all time great, Bonds had made a stylistic change to his approach as he hit his late 30’s. At an age when players typically became more scrappy and less powerful, Bonds had bulked up and become a left handed power hitter that could absolutely crank anything left out over the plate. He choked up, strapped an armored plate on his right elbow and stood on top of the plate. Pitching inside was out of the question with his protected elbow hanging out over the inner edge. Bonds was a damn good hitter too and a patient one at that. Rarely did he chase anything out of the zone. His batting eye was unmatched in the history of baseball. The combination of his patience, his increased power and the out of this world natural ability gave us the perfect storm in 2001 and 2002.
