Robert Hanashiro / USA TODAY NETWORK
Barry Bonds claims Shohei Ohtani has it easier than he did back when he played. “It was a different game back then,” he said in a new interview.
Apparently, according to Barry Bonds, those pesky “unwritten rules” of baseball would have come back to bite Shohei Ohtani if he had played in the steroid era, err, I mean Barry Bonds’ playing days.
“The pitching and hitting has been outstanding. For what he’s done in base running and stuff like that, he’s a complete player,” Bonds told the All The Smoke podcast. “I mean, there’s no doubt about the type of player he is and what he’s accomplished in his career.
“The game has just changed. The game is way different than when I played. The same way Michael [Jordan] talks about it or anyone else. Ohtani is not gonna hit two home runs without seeing one go right here [points past his head] in my generation. I don’t care what he does. He’s not gonna steal two bases without somebody decapitating his kneecap and slow him down because it’s a different game back then.
“Today’s game they take batting practice all day. They take batting practice at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, all the way up. These guys hit more than I’ve ever seen in my entire lifetime that we didn’t do. And they should be better than us, hitting-wise, because they can hit a home run, flip their bat up in the air, get a taco, come back down, have a limo, drive around, all these antics that we weren’t allowed to do. If I did anything like that there’s no way I’m going to see a star. I’ll see the hospital, but there ain’t no way I’m gonna see a baseball that game.”
“So as a hitter, we had to hit in a way to where if I hit a home run I know what’s coming in next at bat or the possibility. So my thing is, I have to be a little more defensive and be more of a contact hitter to get out of a problem. They can just hit, hit, and sometimes I think it could be a disadvantage.
“But Ohtani? Dude, boy can play.”
Just spitballing here, but perhaps, just maybe, Barry Bonds wouldn’t have gotten thrown at so much when he played if he wasn’t such a prick to so many people and wasn’t allegedly juiced to the gills while breaking all of Major League Baseball’s home run records. Maybe.