Well, isn’t THIS “interesting”? (Cue Church Lady voice.)
Gator may write something later from the “Feesh/Macondo” point of view, mainly about owner Jeff Loria trying to gin up attendance, if nothing else, but …
The Marlins are looking at hiring Barry Bonds as a coach.
As far as I’m aware, this is the first serious employment offer Bonds has drawn as either a coach or a player since his semi-forcible retirement after the 2007 season.
He cleared all criminal charges, of course, and never failed an official PEDs test. Nonetheless, I do wonder if Commissioner Corleone, Rob Manfred, won’t be picking up a hotline to Miami sometime soon.
Stay tuned.
Update, Dec. 4: It’s now official.
Why not give him a bat? Even at his age I think that he would not embarrass himself.
I read OG’s comments on the old site and I think he’s right, It’s gonna be hard to fire him when all the scrubs still suck in August! Loria will probably fire him over the intercom from his panic room.
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I was thinking the same thing–he could probably still hit better than half of active major leaguers.
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One caveat: Sometimes the best players don’t make the best coaches, because they get frustrated that mid-level players don’t “get it” so easily. Ted Williams and Michael Jordan come to mind.
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As they in advertising, there is no bad press, only press. Maybe he will be good at the job. That certainly wasn’t his clubhouse reputation. But I don’t know. If they want to give it a try……….
If you look up a***ole in the dictionary there is a picture of Roger Clemens by the definition. But by all accounts the young players love to have him around and helping them in spring training. So maybe Barry will be great.
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He’s been an instructor in ST for the Giants for years, and by all accounts, he’s good at it and players find him insightful and engaging….of course, that is for a couple of weeks in Florida…essentially, a vacation with baseball practices sprinkled in….being an actual coach and spending 8-9 months traveling around with a team would likely be a much different and more stressful situation.
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Bonds was most certainly forced into retirement. No team engaged in contract talks or approached him about playing despite having a 157 wRC+ the year before…which was 6th in all of baseball, and equivalent to Votto’s career number (pre decline phase), 3 pts higher than Frank Thomas’ career mark, and is 4 pts higher than Miguel Cabrera’s career mark.
In other words, he was still fucking fantastic and not one team offered him a deal even when he offered to play for the minimum. There is almost no chance he wasn’t black balled.
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Don’t forget, he was even willing to play for the league minimum. I was so angry at my rooting interest for not signing him. They’ve proven to not really have standards (cough, Josh Lueke, cough).
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Yep. I’m sure many fans use the “locker room distraction” theory, but he wouldn’t have been a distraction any more than anyone else the media likes to follow around. Everyone said McGwire was going to be a distraction when the Cardinals hired him….never happened. The media gets bored fast, and so do fans.
People really underestimate the number of assholes in baseball. Remember what dicks high school jocks are? Well, those are the guys that become MLB players. Most are egotistical dicks. There is little chance he would have been a locker room problem. Even in SF most of his teammates actually liked him….it was the media he was a dick to.
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Good point. Same holds true with politicians, eh?
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Right … I wonder if he ever contacted the players’ association about a possible collusion suit?
On your other comment, yeah, I remember the ST work … wasn’t denigrating that, but was just seeing full-time coaching as more serious.
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Yep, hard to get frustrated when you are not really invested in improvement…throw out some ideas and just enjoy talking baseball. Being an actual coach is WAAAAAY different, and could lead to frustration if he isn’t patient. He’s older now. Perhaps he’s mellowed in some respects.
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I’m pretty sure he did bring a suit and it was dismissed. Not like they can force teams to provide copies of communications without having evidence already.
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Maybe it was a Tweed Suit. Or perhaps it was the color. If it was overly garish I could see how it was dismissed.
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I think you’d have a damn hard time finding anyone with the Cubs…actually with the team as a player, coach, or in the front office…that has much negative to say about Manny Ramirez’s time as a roving “hitting instructor” throughout the various levels in the organization.
Miami doesn’t really seem like the right fit based on what is known about their front office, but who knows. Maybe it works out. Bonds obviously has a shitton of wisdom about hitting baseballs that he could pass on, it would be nice to see him doing it.
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I agree on wondering about the fit, which is why I wonder if Scrooge McLoria is doing this as a turnstiles deal first. But, Bonds has indicated he’ll do what’s needed to get his foot further in the door.
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I think he’ll do just fine. He’s obviously got talent, and knows what the hell he’s doing better than most. From all accounts, he’s never been a bad locker room guy, he hated the press, mostly for good reason, so I don’t see where the downsides to hiring him is. This is a good move I think and he’ll end up a valuable asset.
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Oh, I wish him the best, too. Let’s stand by to see if this is finalized. Per Lions, I think he has mellowed out the last couple of years.
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Well, except for that one time Jim Leyland let him have it…
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I used to think Barry was a clubhouse cancer. Then Jeff Kent spent a couple of years in Houston.
I realized that anyone who DIDN’T try to strangle Jeffy was probably a sociopath.
So I can buy the argument that the real problem was with the press. To which I can say “meh.”
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Since the entire subject interests me so little – I mean, I’m dismissive of the idea that Scrooge McLoria, who trotted out the decaying Muhammad Ali as some macabre publicity stunt before the inaugural game at Macondo Banana Massacre Field is incapable of anything – I’ll just re-post here the gist of what I wrote over on FKAHBT when Craig broke this story like a canopic jar yesterday:
Only Scrooge McLoria and the Chihuahua would conclude that fans who hate the ground they contaminate – which is most of them – would flock to Macondo Banana Massacre Field to see a hitting coach.
But let’s look at the way these people think, based on thirteen years of close observation: spend money on one hitting coach, because it will be cheaper in the long run than going out and signing multiple free agents. Then let the hitting coach sprinkle his goopher dust on the rookies and journeyman mediocrities on whom we spend little as possible, turning them all into fearsome offensive juggernauts.
Then fire everyone who supported the idea when it doesn’t work. Someone suggested over on FKAHBT that it would be hard to fire Bonds. No, not for these guys. They’d just have some functionary call him, then hide from him the same way they did from Tommy Hutton.
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