FOUR BAGGER NL Most Valuable Player: Barry Bonds, San Francisco
Note that Barry should actually have 6 MVPS. - Caxton
Barry Bonds / LF
Height: 6'2"
Weight: 210
Bats/Throws: L/L
By Ken Gurnick
MLB.com
Barry Bonds capped a season of shattered records Monday by becoming baseball's first four-time Most Valuable Player.
Bonds received 30 of 32 first-place votes -- Sammy Sosa got the other two -- to outdistance Arizona's Luis Gonzalez and Sosa for the NL award, voted by members of the Baseball Writers Association of America.
Bonds, who has had a tempestuous relationship with the writers, also won the award in 1990-92-93. He finished a close second to Terry Pendleton in a controversial 1991 vote and was runner-up last year to San Francisco Giants teammate Jeff Kent. This was Bonds' 10th top 10 MVP finish in the last 12 years.
The seven previous three-time MVPs -- Yogi Berra, Roy Campanella, Joe DiMaggio, Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Mantle, Stan Musial and Mike Schmidt -- are Hall of Famers, and Bonds will join them five years after he retires. Though he's 37, Bonds doesn't expect that to happen any time soon.
Clearly the player of his generation, Bonds took it to an unprecedented level in 2001 with one of the greatest offensive seasons in history. Clubs tried to pitch around him, but combining patience with aggressiveness he punished mistake pitches with remarkable efficiency.
Among the records Bonds broke this season include:
Mark McGwire's three-year-old single-season home run record with 73.
Babe Ruth's 78-year-old single-season walk record with 177.
Ruth's 81-year-old single-season slugging percentage record with an .863 mark.
McGwire's at bat-per-home run record with 6.5.
Tied Ruth at 1.379 for the highest single-season combination of on-base and slugging percentage.
The 73 home runs gave Bonds 567 for his career and jumped him from 17th on the all-time list when the season started to seventh, passing Ted Williams, Jimmie Foxx, Mickey Mantle and distant cousin Reggie Jackson, among others.
Harmon Killebrew (573), recently retired Mark McGwire (583) and Frank Robinson (586) are within one-year's production for Bonds, which would leave him fourth behind Henry Aaron (755), Babe Ruth (714) and his godfather, Willie Mays (660).
Multiple NL MVP Award winners
PLAYER AWARDS YEARS
Barry Bonds 4 1990, '92-93, '01
Roy Campanella 3 1951, '53, '55
Stan Musial 3 1943, '46, '48
Mike Schmidt 3 1980-81, '86
Ernie Banks 2 1958-59
Johnny Bench 2 1970, '72
Carl Hubbell 2 1933, '36
Willie Mays 2 1954, '65
Joe Morgan 2 1975-76
Dale Murphy 2 1982-83
NOTE: Frank Robinson, who won the NL MVP in 1961, also won the AL MVP in 1966. He is the only player ever to win the award in both leagues.
Even before 2001, Bonds had established himself as probably the best package of power and speed in history. He has had one season of 40 home runs and 40 stolen bases and five seasons of 30/30. The most recent of those was 1997, but since then Bonds has adapted to baseball's shift to power.
His stolen base totals dropped from 37 that year to 11 in 2000 and 13 in 2001. Meanwhile, he undertook a strenuous conditioning program that rebuilt his body. He hired a personal coach and nutritionist, added an estimated 20 pounds of muscle and his home run totals jumped from 34 in an injury-plagued 1999 to 49 in 2000 to 73 this year.
For winning the MVP, Bonds earned a $100,000 bonus through the terms of a three-year contract extension that just expired. He's a free agent, has had no negotiations with the Giants and can sign with another club starting Tuesday.
He sought an extension in spring training, but Giants management wasn't interested. He now is believed to be seeking a contract for four to six years in the neighborhood of $20 million annually. He earned $10.3 million in 2001.
In the strike-shortened 1994 season, Bonds put up offensive numbers that were surpassed only by eventual MVP Jeff Bagwell of Houston. But in the MVP voting, Bonds finished fourth behind Bagwell, then-teammate Matt Williams and Montreal's Moises Alou.
Bonds and his camp interpreted that apparent slight as punishment for his rude treatment of reporters in general, and in particular his refusal to appear at a New York writers dinner to accept the 1993 MVP award.
Some of Bonds' strongest advocates are still smarting over the 1991 vote. Had two writers who voted for Pendleton voted for Bonds, he not only would have won the MVP that year, but four consecutive years.
Last year, Bonds finished second in the voting despite hitting 16 more home runs and scoring 15 more runs than Kent in 107 fewer at-bats.
Ken Gurnick is a regional writer for MLB.com, based in Los Angeles. |
