{"id":423,"date":"2008-05-15T18:01:37","date_gmt":"2008-05-15T17:01:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=423"},"modified":"2009-09-26T11:42:35","modified_gmt":"2009-09-26T10:42:35","slug":"bonds-and-collusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/?p=423","title":{"rendered":"Bonds and collusion"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sports fans reading the Guardian today were treated to an interesting article <\/a>by Lawrence Donegan about Barry Bonds.\u00c2\u00a0 Entitled: “Giant banished from kingdom by the small minds of baseball”, Donegan draws attention to the way in which Bonds is currently without a team, with the Players’ Union raising fears of collusion on the part of the thirty MLB teams.<\/p>\n

Whether collusion is really a factor is a difficult thing to assess.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s hard to imagine that there is any secret information on Bonds that has done the rounds.\u00c2\u00a0 We all know what the issues are: he’s got the accusations of drug use over his head (a P.R. problem for any potential new team), he’s got\u00c2\u00a0the impending trial for alleged perjury (a P.R. problem and possible distraction), and he has the reputation of being a surly team mate who might negatively affect the atmosphere in a clubhouse.\u00c2\u00a0 Add them together and you can well understand why the thirty teams could have arrived at the same answer independently.<\/p>\n

But, none of those factors affect how well Bonds can hit a baseball.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s no doubt whatsoever that he would provide a boost to several teams that,\u00c2\u00a0 with one big addition or two,\u00c2\u00a0might have a shot at the post-season.\u00c2\u00a0 So the acid test will be whether Bonds lands with a team in the next month or two.\u00c2\u00a0 If he is keeping himself fit (which by all accounts he is) then he is going to be a compelling option for someone willing to take a chance.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0With all teams looking to find even the slightest edge on their competitors,\u00c2\u00a0it would be strange if not even one of them seriously considers him.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure whether we’ve seen the last of Bonds or not.\u00c2\u00a0 It will be very interesting finding out over the next few weeks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sports fans reading the Guardian today were treated to an interesting article by Lawrence Donegan about Barry Bonds.\u00c2\u00a0 Entitled: “Giant banished from kingdom by the small minds of baseball”, Donegan draws attention to the way in which Bonds is currently without a team, with the Players’ Union raising fears of collusion on the part of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[553],"class_list":["post-423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mlb-2","tag-mlb-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=423"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4545,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/423\/revisions\/4545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballgb.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}