Sunday, August 10, 2003
There are a couple of things that might derail Bonds's pursuit of Aaron. The biggest unknown as I see it is whether the reflexes that make Barry the baddest man on the baseball planet will start to age in dog years as he reaches 40. Historically, the closest analogs might be Ted Williams and Aaron himself. Williams hit .388 in 1957 as a 39-year-old before hitting the wall. Aaron hit 40 homers in 1973, also at age 39, after setting his career high in homers two years earlier with 47 in '71. His homer totals in his final three seasons were 20, 12, and 10 before he retired in '76. Barry needs to buck that trend to get past Aaron.
The other thing is that Barry is already good for sitting out 10-15% of his team's games. Is that number going to stay the same or increase as Bonds enters his forties? If he starts to need a day off every fifth or even fourth game, then you are talking about 120-130 games played a year for the fortysomething Bonds. If he can keep his skills up this only delays the inevitable, but the longer it takes the more chance there is for a debilitating injury in the meantime.
We can look to a couple of examples from the NFL and NBA in Jerry Rice and Michael Jordan as guys who once ruled their sport but accepted playing at a C/C- All-Star level when they were 40. If Barry is willing to accept a similar transition in his status, I think he still has the drive to put himself in position to catch Aaron sometime around his 42nd birthday.
posted by Tom Renbarger 1:27 PM
