Peter Gammons Baseball writer and Hall Of Famer March 12th 2014

Peter Gammons: Bonds returns to the game; Pujols looking to answer

March 12, 2014 by Peter Gammons 1 Comment

The Angels drive over to Scottsdale Monday to play the Giants, and Albert Pujols has already asked for the trip. “I hope I can see Barry and spend some time just talking hitting with him,” Pujols said Tuesday. “I hope he is still around. Just to pick his brain on hitting. It’s always a good thing.”
Albert Pujols, Barry Bonds. Albert will hear what Barry talked about Monday, about being prepared each day with some idea how each opposing pitcher will try to get him out. “Then,” Bonds always says, “when you get that one pitch, don’t miss it.” Because when Bonds talks hitting, he sounds like Ted Williams and his constant “get a good pitch to hit—your pitch—and don’t miss.” Like Williams, hitters just want to talk hitting with Bonds, hitters like Pujols, or in Ted’s day, hitters like Al Kaline.
It is fascinating to watch the dynamics of these two great sluggers. On the one hand, when Bonds showed up at the Giants facility to begin a weeklong stretch as hitting advisor, it was an event because Bonds in some ways has been exiled from the sport. It’s almost as if he never existed, or that he doesn’t have more homers (762) than any player ever or seven MVP awards, the second highest WAR ever, the most runs created, the most walks.
We all know why. He wouldn’t talk about it, or the Hall of Fame (“you guys are adults, you don’t have to be told anything”) or Biogenesis or anything else from the past or present investigations into performance enhancing drugs, for which he remains the poster boy because he was so ridiculously great. Which is why it seems he’s the last person MLB wants to see in a Giants uniform.
Barry clearly would like to at least be asked to participate. He mentions the fortune he had to be raised in the sport by his father Bobby and his godfather Willie Mays. Monday he mentioned he was lucky to have been taught by “great coaches,” and mentioned Bill Virdon, with whom he once had a confrontation as a Pirate. He lavished praise on Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine, who will be enshrined in Cooperstown this July. He talked about accepting former teammate Glenallen Hill’s request to work with Dexter Fowler.
And he talked about his current existence, which he says consists mainly of “working out and training. That’s what I have always loved doing, I work out five to eight hours a day. I love cycling, 35, 40, 45 miles a day, training with cyclists. I don’t do the lifting the way I used to do, but I love working out. I probably like training better than I do talking to people.”
The size is different from his 2000-2007 time, but it is true, he was always a gym rat. When he won the MVP award in 1993, he did an interview at the house of his then-agent Dennis Gilbert, and afterwards we went to dinner in West Hollywood, called it an early night and went to train the next morning for eight hours.
With the media and the players, Bonds has been what he often could be—charming, witty, insightful. He would like to at least restore some of the pre-’99 graces he enjoyed, without the periods of time when he could be what one magazine headlined, that person who’d kindly let you know “I’m Barry Bonds and you’re not.” Yet still had that incredible mind for hitting, for remembering. “I will admit that I played my best when I was angry. When I mellowed out I guess I struggled.”
Bonds doesn’t know what future he holds in the game, although he clearly misses a part of it. He was asked about managing. Yah. Barry Bonds ain’t riding the front seat of the bus 180 days a year. “This is a good start, I just don’t really know where it all leads right now.”
A few miles down the road, Pujols is weaving his own path back. He is 34 now, in the third year of a ten year, $240M contract. It was only two springs ago that 60 Minutes did a brilliant profile of him and his esteemed place in baseball history. “It seems as if that were years ago,” Pujols said Tuesday. “It wasn’t, but it seems like that.” When USA Today columnist Bob Nightengale was doing an interview with Pujols last week, another writer asked Albert about whether he’s still motivated to play. “It really happened, as if I had been out of the game or had done nothing.”
“One of the great things about this spring is that Albert has his chip back,” says one Angels official. “He has come into camp wanting to prove he is as great as ever. He wants to be Albert Pujols.”
“I want to do what I know I can do,” says Pujols. “I know I haven’t had my best seasons with the Angels. But my knee is healthy again. My shoulder and elbow are back to normal. No surgeries, just a lot of hard work rehabbing. So now I can go about my work and swing the bat without restriction. I can answer whatever people want to say about me by producing numbers and helping the Angels win games.”
The spring training after his boffo 2001 rookie season, Pujols said, “I will work harder this year than last because there will always be someone trying to take my job.” And he did. “I know sometimes writers and people didn’t like the fact that I didn’t always have time for them. But when I am right, I am focused, focused on preparing to hit. That’s my job. My performance is what should speak for me.”
Injuries have slowed him down, in 2013 limiting him to 99 games. His on base percentage, OPS, OPS+ and home runs have declined five consecutive years.
That said, he sits at 492 home runs. His 1.008 OPS is the highest of any active player. His OPS+ of 165 is the highest. His WAR is second.
While Mike Trout has deservedly earned the right to be called the best player in the game, the 2014 Albert Pujols is moving in the field and driving balls from alley to alley like the Albert of six years ago.
And Josh Hamilton, who in his first year in Anaheim fell to a .250/.309/.432/.739 21 homer level, seems to have regained some of his persona. He has been held back with a calf injury, but his batting practices have been like the Home Run Derby in Yankee Stadium. His focus, too, is on redeeming his place in the game. “Josh likes being The Guy,” says one teammate.
The day before position players reported, Pujols and Hamilton were on the lower fields at the Angels’ complex with teammates. Hamilton took a round where he cleared towers on other fields. “This is the 240 pound Josh Hamilton,” Pujols yelled out. “Not the 214 pound guy.”
Next round, Hamilton took another mighty swing and the bat snapped at the handle. Coaches and teammates seemed to be in disbelief. (Actually, I saw this happen with Jim Rice in a game in Detroit)
As Josh picked up the two pieces of the bat and reached for a new one handed to him by Pujols, he said, “OK guys, make sure you get the story right when you tell and retell it.”
Pujols and Hamilton want to go back and be what earned them the Arte Moreno contracts, because when they look in the mirror, that’s who they want to see. Barry Bonds doesn’t have that opportunity, but he wants to at least regain part of his place in the game, a place where people remember him for what he was and for the Williamesque hitting IQ he possesses. “A person who graduates from Harvard Law School pretty much knows what he’s going to do,” Bonds says, trailing off to wondering exactly what he’s going to do in baseball.
If they meet up on Monday, Barry will probably enjoy discussing whatever Albert wants to discuss about the science of hitting. If Hamilton wants to drive over, Bonds would enjoy him, as well.
These three men have been places few players have ever dreamed of being. They know what it’s like, and they love the reminders of how it feels. Pujols can get back there, if he can remain healthy. Hamilton, who turns 33 in two months, can get back there, as well. For Barry Bonds, just being on the field in uniform and having someone say he hit more home runs than anyone ever might be close to enough.
“We all make mistakes,” he said Monday in a private moment, mistakes that baseball would prefer to ignore, as it ignores another man who had the most hits and this