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Update: Looks like Bonds will take the gig.
Barry Bonds, with negotiations not yet finalized, tentatively plans to accept the #Marlins offer to be hitting coach with Frank Menechino.
— Bob Nightengale (@BNightengale) December 1, 2015
I'm happy for Bonds, who still hasn't really retired because he was blacklisted out of the league. If Mark McGwire can be on his third team as a coach, though, it's past due for someone to give Bonds a shot.
It appears as if there are some grumbling Giants fans out there, who wanted Bonds's hometown team to swoop, and I can appreciate that. But a) Hensley Meulens has proven his worth, and hitters have generally met or exceeded expectations under him, and b) I'm okay with another team giving him a test drive. He can always come on back if the Marlins are weird. Unlikely, I know. But possible!
Original post:
From the "WELL, WE WEREN'T EXPECTING THIS HEADLINE" files, we have a break from John Lackey rumors and other assorted tomfoolery. Jon Heyman has the scoop that will make your head hurt:
Barry Bonds is under consideration to be a Marlins hitting coach
Okay, so we have a lot of fun feting Barry Bonds around here. He's responsible for as many happy-fun-time moments as any player in San Francisco Giants history. He created AT&T Park by scooping up mud from the shoreline and blowing life into it, saying, "Here. This is my gift to you, San Francisco. I love you." But he's ... mercurial. Prickly! There's probably a pretty good reason why the most knowledgeable hitter alive has never been hired as a team's primary hitting coach.
That's why the key word up there is a Marlins hitting coach. Not the Marlins hitting coach. A Marlins hitting coach. He's already worked with players like Dexter Fowler and Alex Rodriguez, and he was the Giants' special instructor before the 2014 season for a week, so we know that he can do the part-time thing. So it might not be that farfetched.
I'm torn between two feelings, then. The first is that the Marlins are gross. Just a nasty, teal-and-bile mess on the side of the country that likes to poison the Giants when they aren't giving away a Cody Ross. They need to keep their flippers off our hero.
The second is that Barry Bonds being employed by Jeffrey Loria is a beautiful dreamscape of wonder and possibilities.
There’s a four alarm fire in the "BARRY BONDS X GIANCARLO STANTON" chunk of my brain right now. https://t.co/Olp4X8vMU7
— Lindsey Adler (@Lahlahlindsey) November 30, 2015
Three. There are three feelings worth exploring. Because I think Stanton under Bonds's tutelage, with Bonds employed by an erratic Loria regime, is a baseball story we can all get behind, enough to ignore just how gross the Marlins are.
It wasn't the headline you were expecting. But it's probably the headline you deserved. Barry Bonds, Miami Marlin? Well, huh. I'm behind it only if he starts hitting pre-game dingers at the peyote sculpture and we get to watch.