Along with the rest of the Netflix crew, Barry Bonds made his MLB streaming debut with the service for the MLB Opening Night game between the New York Yankees and San Francisco Giants on Wednesday.
The MLB all-time home run leader be working as an analyst for the Netflix pre- and post-game shows this season, and he also made an appearance in the booth during the sixth inning.
During that interview alongside Matt Vasgersian, CC Sabathia and Hunter Pence, Bonds recalled an interesting story about his free agency following the 1992 season, when he left the Pittsburgh Pirates for the Giants.
The Yankees were one of Bonds’ other suitors at the time, and he claims it wasn’t money that ended up pushing him away from the Bronx. He said it was Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.
Bonds’ recollection:
“George isn’t here anymore, so I can tell the truth. I would have been a Yankee, but Steinbrenner got on the phone and he called us. They told me, ‘Barry, we’re going to give you the money’ — the highest-paid player at that time — ‘but you have to sign the contract by 2 o’clock this afternoon.’
“I said, ‘Excuse me?’ And I just hung the phone up. I went to go get lunch and Dennis Gilbert, my agent, was like, ‘Do you know what you just did?’ I’m like, ‘Do you know what he just said?’ By the time I walked down the street to go get lunch — I said, ‘Let me just think about this’ — the Giants called me and I said, ‘I’m going home.’”
There are a few things going on in this story, so let’s take this one-by-one.
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Bonds is apparently comfortable telling this story only because Steinbrenner is dead, which has been true since 2010.
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The Yankees were allegedly set on giving Bonds the largest contract in MLB, but supposedly only if he would meet an arbitrary deadline to sign a contract the day they made the offer.
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George Steinbrenner supposedly reached out to Bonds personally, despite the fact he was quite famously banned from baseball from 1990 to 1993.
That latter point is certainly worth pondering. Steinbrenner accepted a lifetime ban from then-MLB commissioner Fay Vincent for paying a known gambler for dirt on Dave Winfield and wasn’t officially reinstated until March of 1993. Bonds signed with the Giants in December of 1992.
So we have a case where either Bonds is lying/misremembering or Steinbrenner was openly shirking a ban from baseball to talk to the biggest free agent in baseball. You can be the judge on what’s most likely.
Barry Bonds to the Yankees is a fascinating what-if.
(Michael Tullberg via Getty Images)
You can also choose whether to believe Bonds or the newspaper of record at the time. As The New York Times reported, the sticking point between Bonds and the Yankees wasn’t so much respect as the club’s refusal to add a year to their five-year, $36 million offer. The Yankees reportedly gave him a two-day window to accept their offer and withdrew from the proceedings when he turned them down.
As then-Yankees general manger Gene Michael explained:
“We wanted him and now it’s off,” Michael said in a phone interview from Tampa, Fla. “We’re going for pitching. Maybe it’s the right thing to do. We will not have Barry Bonds with a sixth year.”
“We have to draw the line somewhere … I have no regrets saying we did not offer him a sixth year. We offered him a fantastic contract for five years. We really went out of our way to make a nice offer.”
The article does not mention Steinbrenner.
The Giants ended up giving Bonds that sixth year on a then-record $44 million contract and kept him through 2007. In return, they received some spectacular baseball, then spectacular scandal.
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