Sid Bream scored the winning run in that Game Seven after a Bonds throw to the plate was not in time. You can’t really blame Bonds for that Game-Seven loss, but you can’t help but think that the 16 years that have followed don’t have anything to do with the Pirates' two-time MVP leaving town for a record contract with the Giants.
It was a blow that the team has simply never been able to recover from.
A New Era
Barry Bonds led the Pirates in almost every important offensive category in the 1992 season. You name it, and he pretty much did it.
He wasn’t a great player on a great team. He was the team.
There is almost no modern comparison to what it was like for the Pirates to lose Bonds at that time.
Remove Manny Ramirez or David Ortiz from the Boston Red Sox, and they still win.
Take away Alex Rodriguez from the Yankees, and they’ll be okay, too.
Those are teams with a lot of good players. They can sustain such a blow and not even have to replace a singular superstar to still complete.
I suppose the best comparison would be the St. Louis Cardinals and Albert Pujols. They wouldn’t be a very good team without him, but would they go from three outs from a World Series title to the worst team in baseball over the next 16 years?
The following year, after Bonds left, the Pirates dropped from 96 wins and a division title to 75 wins and a fifth-place finish.
Still, not all the blame falls on Bonds for the big collapse in the year after he left.
For one, management could have done something about it. Let’s face it, management has everything to do with this record run of ineptitude.
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