When the Miami Marlins hired Barry Bonds to be their hitting coach, they were likely counting on a big name to help sell tickets and a talented mentor for their young hitters.
The Marlins might be getting all that and more. As it turns out, Barry’s still got it.
Barry Bonds just beat the Marlins players on a back field HR BP contest. Including Stanton.
— Craig Mish (@CraigMish) March 16, 2016
Bonds is 50-freaking-1 years old, but age is apparently just a number to the all-time home run king. This performance made Manager Don Mattingly’s comments from December seem very prescient.
“The knowledge is there,” Mattingly told Chris Cwik of Yahoo Sports. “You know he understands exactly, probably at a level that maybe not very many may understand, but also a guy that came through a pretty good teaching. His dad was a good teacher. Willie Mays was a pretty good teacher, he’s his Godson. So he’s from a good teaching background. And his attitude of wanting to be good. When Barry Bonds tells me he wants to be good at something, I think he’s going to be good.”
“Barry could play, I bet,” Mattingly said. “He looks like he could still play.”
Most took those words in jest, but perhaps Mattingly knew more than he was letting on. Beating Stanton, perhaps the most fearsome home run hitter in the majors, in a batting practice home run competition is no small feat. It is not too far fetched to think Bonds could actually help the Marlins on offense, and that he’d be effective as baseball’s first player-coach in the majors since Pete Rose in 1984-86.
Unfortunately for those of us not fortunate to witness it in person, the competition will apparently be limited to word-of-mouth recounting.
There won't be video. I caught the end. Fumbled on the way to periscope. Fail.
— Craig Mish (@CraigMish) March 16, 2016
Here’s hoping someone else filmed today’s events on the sly. Bonds’ heroics are too incredible to be left to just the stuff of legend.
