Alec, why can't you understand that in baseball, very very very little beyond the box score does matter? Each player is very little more than the sum of their performance. ARod or Bonds or whomever are each 1 of 25 players. At most, they make 3-4 defensive plays a game and have about 5 at-bats a game. There just isn't an opportunity for one player to "take over a game" like in basketball or other sports.

Obviously, starting pitchers are a different story. But they, too, are the sum of their defense, ballpark, luck, and most importantly, performance. Undefined, unquantifiable "devotion to winning," and other such fake, imaginary bullshit concepts that look great in Major League 2: Back To The Minors, don't actually exist.

Barry Bonds was 6 outs from winning a World Series. He didn't blow the game. OK, you say he isn't in the same league as worse players because they did more to help their teams. Let's actually take a look at things, eh?

In the 2002 NLDS, he hit .294/.409/.824. Let me spell that out for you. A slugging percentage of Eight Hundred Twenty Four.

In the NLCS, he hit .273/.591/.727. True, he only slugged .727 this time, but he made up for that by getting on base 60% of the time he stepped up to the plate.

In the World Series, he hit a mere .471/.700/1.294. I suppose his World Series OPS of 1.994 is just another data point in his long career of not being a winner, huh?

Granted, that is a very small sample size. His career postseason perfomance, in 151 at-bats, is .245/.433/.503. A career .936 postseason OPS. Yup, a definite loser.

Just asserting that something is so - "Barry Bonds/A-Rod/Frank Thomas/whoever is a loser cause I say so and I've seen it with my own eyes and he's a surly guy" - doesn't make it so. Numbers speak louder than words.

Damn, I forgot how much ass he kicked in the 2002 postseason.

Well, I must have missed the press release, because that 2002 Box Stat World Series Rings look real good on Bonds finger. Same for the 2005 Cardinals and 1990 A's. You can bore the world to death with your take on things, but people only remember a winner. Which Bonds has proven himself not to be and will never prove otherwise, unless BALCO can whip up a nice anti-arthretic knee cream.

alec, I don't think you get it. Bonds did everything a human being possibly can to help that Giants team. He hit like a monster. I mean, he had a fucking OPS of 2 in the World Series! The fact that the rest of the Giants weren't as good, or that a couple pitchers couldn't hold onto a lead in Game 6 literally implies NOTHING about Bonds, his abilities, his value, or what he has proven himself to be.

I suppose David Justice, who made the playoffs every year of his 17-year career, was better than Bonds, huh? According to what I'll generously call your logic.

I love it when The Boss acts like a 10 year old. Red Sox fans are right, the Yankees Suck. They should win every year if they have a $200 million payroll.

It's so refreshing to see that you cannot in fact buy everything with money. Yankees in the cellar, a Chicago team in first place: things are certainly changing.

Of course, I'm biased and I want the Red Sox to defeat the evil empire in the ALCS this year too.