Barry Bonds Quotes

This is a time in baseball when steroids have become a pretty big deal. On our team, you got Barry Bonds, who is hitting home runs like a mortar barrage, and whose head has grown to a size where when they make his promotional bobble-head, they just do the whole thing to scale, while across the bay in Oakland, Mark McGwire now has forearms like Popeye and will only speak in dialects of horse, and they’re keeping José Canseco chained to a post under the ballpark and throwing him raw meat until right before game time, so the league is starting to get sensitive about it.

Giants with the bases loaded. The Mets were up by three. The pitcher launched the ball toward home plate. It sliced through the air at ninety-two miles an hour and connected dead-on with Barry Bonds’s bat. Crack! The ball soared over the field and dropped into a fan’s leather glove, two rows behind the wall in the bleacher section. Home run! James and Thomas leaped from their seats. They whooped and hollered, smacking each other’s palms in high tens. “Game over!” Thomas clapped his hands. “Time to pay up.

With the card, there’s a photo of us from the day Yael taught me to box. The selfie in the mirror. I gulp at the image of our bodies together. My heart feels like its pumping tar through my veins. I wish I had the power to free my hands and shape my own life. But I don’t.

The writer's craft, explained! I have stood on the shores of imagination, gazing at a sea of dreams. It is a lonely place, for not many can stand on that shifting sand and call it home. I can see others who also weave a web of dreams and will share them. We are called storytellers and we alone have that gift that feed the needs of the many. We are a strange family, united in our separate talents and bonded by our willingness to share. The price we pay, is a dependence on others, reaching out to listen to our stories. WE must never forget our need for the herd or they will forget us! There is no savage punishment for such as we, than to be easily forgotten! This is our greatest fear and all of us share that terror. So write brothers and sisters, write and bare your souls without fear. If you are good enough, they will listen and they will remember you. Its all we can ask!

The problem faced by the company DeBeers, which in 1902 controlled 90 percent of the world’s diamond production, was how to sell to this much bigger market without devaluing the gems in the process. They managed it through a cunning marketing campaign: by concocting the phrase “Diamonds are forever,” they invented the idea of the diamond engagement ring as the only true way to express everlasting love. Anyone who wished to convince their lover of the truth of their feelings needed to buy one, and the more expensive the diamond, the truer the feelings expressed. The marketing campaign took off spectacularly, catapulting a diamond into millions of households and culminating in a James Bond movie, accompanied by a Shirley Bassey / John Barry song, that enshrined the new social role of the diamond as the embodiment of romantic love.

She was funny and quick-witted, and she cared for me in a way I wasn't used to, a way I couldn't really process. She laughed at my jokes even when they weren't funny. She listened to me and didn't try to fix things. [...] Unconditional acceptance. She wasn't afraid to look at the darkness and keep smiling. Unlike everyone else, who either looked and then looked away, ashamed, or gawked. But more important, she was different. She was like no one I'd ever met before. And, to my shame, I allowed that to consume me. I was so used to being an outcast that I thought only of what made her different, too, thinking that this bonded us, that I couldn't possibly have anything to offer other than commiseration. And I fell in love with her. Far too hard and far too soon. And I just assumed that the feelings were reciprocated. Not really because of anything she did—though I convinced myself certain things mattered more than they did—but mostly because that's what I needed in the moment. I treated her like a remedy, not a person.

No single Barry Bonds home run or Lance Armstrong Tour de France stage win can be attributed to doping, nor did doping act alone. Bonds still had to hit the ball, and Armstrong still had to pedal. But doping surely helped them hit farther and bike faster. Major storms, like home run records and multiple Le Tour wins, have happened before.

She had become reconciled to the idea of an eternal shadow; she discovered that, far from being a threat, her bodyguards were much wiser sounding boards than many of the gentleman courtiers who fluttered around her. Police officers like Sergeant Allan Peters and Inspector Graham Smith became avuncular father figures, defusing tricky situations and deflating overweening subjects alike with a joke or a crisp command. They also brought her mothering instincts to the fore. She remembered their birthdays, sent notes of apology to their wives when they had to accompany her on an overseas tours and ensured that they were “fed and watered” when she went out with them from Kensington Palace. When Graham Smith contracted cancer, she invited him and his wife on holiday to Necker in the Caribbean and also on a Mediterranean cruise on board the yacht owned by Greek tycoon, John Latsis. Such is her affection for this popular police officer that she arranged a dinner in his honour after he had recovered which was attended by her family. If she is dining with friends at San Lorenzo, her favourite restaurant, her current detective, Inspector Ken Wharfe will often join her table at the end of the meal and regale the assembled throng with his jokes. Perhaps she reserves her fondest memories for Sergeant Barry Mannakee who became her bodyguard at a time when she felt lost and alone in the royal world. He sensed her bewilderment and became a shoulder for her to lean on and sometimes to cry on during this painful period. The affectionate bond that built up between them did not go unnoticed either by Prince Charles nor Mannakee’s colleagues. Shortly before the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of York in July 1986 he was transferred to other duties, much to Diana’s dismay. In the following spring he was tragically killed in a motorcycle accident.

Bond switches off the radio and introduces himself in the traditional way, while John Barry paints the air with his magic.

At one point during the season the Giants were visiting Colorado when Bonds was tapped on the shoulder by a Rockies clubhouse employee. “I’m friends with Brian Fisher,” he said. “Remember? He was a pitcher with you on the Pirates.” Bonds sighed dismissively, but continued to listen. Fisher’s son Kyle had

To sell war bonds, they had already organized nearly the entire city, all the way down to the level of each block, making each residential block the responsibility of “a logical leader no matter what her nationality”—i.e., an Irishwoman in an Irish neighborhood, an African American woman in an African American neighborhood, and so on. They intended to use that same organization now to distribute everything from medical care to food.

They awarded Jones the money at a ceremony where the white parish trustees whetted each other to death explaining what unprecedented heroes they were—most of the bond, of course, coming from white taxes.

When Bonds chose to speak to teammates, it usually concerned one topic-Barry Bonds. Behind his back, Williams and Thompson nicknamed Bonds "I-I-Me-Me." If Bonds wasn't discussing his fabulous talents, he was discussing his fat wallet, his new car, his amazing house, his beautiful women. Mark Dewey, a Giants pitcher who lockered near Bonds, could not stand it. Every minute there seemed to be a new boast. 'I was going crazy,' says Dewey. 'So one day I began reading to Barry from the Bible." Dewey encouraged Bonds to make God and his children his priority, and focus less on money. 'That was my way of rebuking him,' says Dewey. Did it work? 'Well,' says Dewey, 'no.

Showing both courage and stupidity, Park refused to issue a walk. With the count 1-1, he hung a meaty breaking ball over the plate, and watched it soar over the center field wall. Homer number 72. 'This begins to leave the realm of reality!' shouted ESPN's Gary Thorne, and finally-after a season of Bonds Mania-someone was speaking the truth. This was not reality. Baseball is a game of failure. Hit the ball three times, miss it seven-that's the ratio the best players hope for. With age, it becomes even harder. Think Babe Ruth with the Boston Braves, Willie Mays with the New York Mets. But here was Bonds, ballooned up, toying with the most challenging of sports. The realm of reality? Reality was dead.