We’ve made a lot of videos at SB Nation. Like this one. We made that, probably. Sometimes, after we make a video, we’ll realize that video contains a whole bunch of tangents to other stuff we’ve made. Episode 3 of Untitled, which explains everything that happened to stop Barry Bonds from winning a World Series, is one such video.
If, after (or before!) watching that Bonds episode, you want to dive even further down any of various rabbit holes, here’s some more stuff we recommend you watch.
Maybe you left this episode fixated on Bonds’s individual greatness. Well, our pal Jon Bois once demonstrated that Bonds was so ridiculously frightening to pitchers that he could have had a very good 2004 season without using a bat:
If you came away from Untitled thinking less “Bonds was amazing at sports” and more “Bonds was kind of a dick”, well, we’ve got even more to watch about his distaste for Jeff Kent, which was mutual, and included that 2002 dugout brawl:
One important event in this Untitled is the final out of the 1992 NLCS between Bonds’ Pirates and the Atlanta Braves. You’ll already know how it ends, but if you want to know even more about what came before that legendary play, there’s a whole episode of Rewinder digging into the relevant background and context:
Also mentioned in Untitled is how often the National League teams advancing at Bonds’ expense went on to win the World Series. That includes the Marlins in 1997 and 2003, with the 2001 Diamondbacks in between. Those Bonds foes had some compelling stories of their own. The Marlins’ bizarre up-and-down-and-up-again-and-then-even-more-down-somehow trajectory is captured in this episode of Collapse:
(If you want to ride a tangent off that tangent, the Jose Mesa vs. Omar Vizquel beef budded directly off the outcome of that ‘97 World Series finish. Also, the saddest plate appearance of all time came from a Giants-Marlins game. We warned you about the rabbit holes.)
Meanwhile, Arizona’s path to the 2001 World Series vs. the Yankees, which came down to a thrilling walkoff, is covered in this episode of Rewinder:
Oh, and one more! Perhaps you noticed Bonds’s manager, Dusty Baker, making some dubious decisions, including the fateful pitching change in Game 6 of the World Series. Well, uh ... it got worse for Baker, but not with the Giants:
Oh, and if you’re a Giants fan and that Untitled episode made you sad about the 90s and 2000s ... we’ve got a Rewinder about good ol’ 2014:
So yeah, we’ve made a lot of videos.