This week in baseball history has traditionally been awards week.
As a result, the events covered here will concern the league MVP award and two dynamic characters that received it.
November 15, 2004: On this date, Barry Bonds added to his already stellar legacy by capturing a seventh league MVP and fourth in a row. Bonds holds the record for most MVP awards. Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio among others are tied for second place with three MVP awards each.
In the 2004 season, Bonds batted .362 with an OBP of .609. He drove in 101 runs, belted 45 homers and drew a league-leading 232 walks. At the age of 39, Barry Bonds surpassed Willie Stargell as the oldest player to win the honor.
If not for his steroid use, Bonds would have perhaps gone down as the greatest player of all time. His career numbers are astronomical and at times, incomprehensible. He collected a record 2,558 walks in his 21 years in the league and surpassed Hank Aaron as the home run king with 762 of his own.
Bonds will never get into the Hall of Fame. It is as if his records mean nothing. To many people, he is the ultimate evil of baseball. He disgraced the game at its highest level. He was the face of baseball and the home run king. The only problem is that he did not achieve these great feats on his own. He had to turn to the aid of PEDs or performance-enhancing drugs, most commonly referred to as steroids. Bonds was accused of using the steroid Winstrol.
Bonds is just one of many players accused of taking steroids to improve his performance. He was one of the most prolific hitters of all time and along with Mark McGwire, they expanded the appeal of the game to more people.
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There is no doubt that Bonds helped bring new fans to baseball and renewed its status as America’s pastime. His contributions to baseball in that aspect cannot be measured. For all of the good he did, he also did immeasurable amounts of damage to our greatest game. He caused the public to lose faith in the leadership of baseball. From the end of the 1990s into the mid 2000s, baseball was engrossed in legal battles and constant debate over the PED influence on great players of the 90s and before.
Barry Bonds will go down as one of the most accomplished players ever to play the game of baseball. But his legacy will mean nothing, as it will always be marred by the stain of PEDs.
November 18, 1949: On this date, Jackie Robinson became the first African American to be named MVP of the National League, and any league.
The MVP award was one more accolade to be added to the legacy of Jackie Robinson. Just two years earlier he was named Rookie of the Year. Robinson burst onto the major league scene in the spring of 1947, two years after he was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers.
April 15, 1947 was the beginning of an incredible movement in baseball and the social conscience of the United States of America. Robinson opened the door for an innumerable amount of players that would not be able to be in the league if it had not been for him.
In his MVP season, Robinson batted .342 with 37 stolen bases and 124 RBIs. He played a brand of baseball that had been unknown in the professional level. He was quick and sly and took every advantage he could. This went against everything that the game had been before he entered it. He opened the door for the entire African American community, the Latino community and beyond to participate in the great game of baseball.
His legacy will live on forever. As long as the game of baseball is played in this world, Jackie Robinson will be known and admired. He was an ambassador of peace and civil rights. Without the bravery he exhibited when he entered the game on that spring day in 1947, the game of baseball would not be the beautiful game it is today.
Baseball is a game of the people and nothing exemplifies this more than breaking the color barrier. It was now truly mutually exclusive to every man, no matter his race or ethnicity.