Year End Award Series - Baseball Player Of The Year 2002

[Keyser Soze]

Bonds. You are looking at a modern day legend. Your kids will someday envy the fact that you saw him play. This past year is just another chapter in what will go down as one of, if not the best player to ever step on to a baseball field.

[GonzoStyle]

I was actually thinking it over today and I was gonna say what keyser just said. When I working at the neighborhood deli here we had an old guy come in every day named Max. Max was about 92 years old I think and still had his wits about him, all of us would gather around him at break time and listen to him tell stories. He's lived in brooklyn his whole life and the question we would ask him most often was of sports legends he saw play and he'd seen them all.

The one we were most interested in was if he ever saw Babe Ruth play and he had. We'd listen to him describe Ruth's play and incidents he witnessed and it was some of the most fascinating things I ever heard, he was an excellent story teller. He'd also tell us about gehrig, the 27 yankees, when gehrig retired he was at the July 4th ceremony for the 'luckiest man alive' speech.

I was thinking to myself that in Bonds we are witnessing a man whom years from now will be our Ruth, while he is nowhere near the charismatic loveable character Ruth was he is just as great. The almost 600 on base percentage, the batting title, 200 walks, I mean it's mind numbing. Just like we ask older people about Ruth, Chamberlin, Mantle, Mays, Russel. Our children and grandchildren will ask us about Jordan and Bonds.