The Slide by Richard Peterson & Stephen Peterson

Author:Richard Peterson & Stephen Peterson
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9780822964445
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Published: 2017-06-22T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

BARRY BONDS'S LAST HURRAH

The 1992 Season

After the disappointing playoff loss to the Cincinnati Reds in 1990, Pittsburgh fans could take some comfort from the major postseason awards won by Pirates players and their manager. The 1991 postseason awards, however, would simply add to the frustration of Pirates fans after another painful loss in the NLCS. John Smiley had an outstanding 1991 season, finishing with a 20–8 record and a 3.08 ERA. He looked like a strong contender for the Cy Young Award, which his teammate Doug Drabek won in 1990. The best he could do, however, was a third-place finish in the Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA) balloting, behind the Atlanta Braves’ twenty-two-game winner Tom Glavine and the St. Louis Cardinals’ ace reliever Lee Smith, who set a National League record with forty-seven saves. Pittsburgh fans could console themselves with the knowledge that Glavine had lost two games in the NLCS to the Pirates, and that two of Smith’s three regular season losses came from dramatic extra-inning home runs off the bats of Barry Bonds and Curt Wilkerson.

With all the divisiveness and turmoil during the 1991 season, Jim Leyland probably overcame more challenges than he had in 1990 when he was named Manager of the Year. But he, too, lost out to an Atlanta Brave when the BBWAA selected Bobby Cox for its managerial honor. Leyland received several first-place votes but finished a distant second to Cox in the balloting.

The Braves made a sweep of the major awards for 1991 when the BBWAA elected Terry Pendleton as the National League Most Valuable Player. Pendleton received twelve first-place votes to ten for Bonds and one for Bobby Bonilla. Pendleton batted .319 to Bonds’s .292, but Bonds had 25 home runs to Pendleton’s 22 and drove in 116 runs to only 86 for Pendleton. However, while the baseball writers, perhaps remembering his animosity toward the press, snubbed Bonds, the Sporting News focused more on Bonds’s on-the-field performance and named him its National League Player of the Year and its Major League Player of the Year.

The Pirates hoped to bounce back from their second consecutive NLCS loss and contend for a third straight division title, but these hopes took a major, though not unexpected, blow when, on December 3, free agent Bonilla signed a five-year, $29 million contract with the New York Mets, making him the highest paid player in team sports. The contract called for a base salary of $27.5 million and a $1.5 million promotional arrangement. Its annual salary of $5.8 million topped the $5.38 million of pitcher Roger Clemens. Growing up in the South Bronx, Bonilla saw his signing as a dream come true. He told the New York media, “I’ve got a soft spot in my heart for New York.”1 Bonilla also had to be happy with the Mets’ signing of free agent Eddie Murray just a week earlier. Murray averaged over twenty-six home runs in his fifteen-year career to that point with the Orioles and Dodgers

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