Clickbait headline? A little, but this is kind of a big deal. No matter what your stance on Barry Bonds is now, the fact that he is potentially going to officially be involved in baseball again is #news and is going to produce lots of #hottakes. Barry Bonds rocking Google Glass made the news? Sorry, this is #news.   

The fact that the Marlins are the team that is going to be employing him? Hoo boy, you could melt down the one ring to rule them all in some of these here takes. Well, not these here takes, necessarily, but, who knows, maybe that depends on how you feel about Bonds. 

First off, let’s get a quick history refresher out of the way. Barry Bonds was one of the best players of all time. Cool? Cool. Now, some of you will want to put an asterisk or five or fifty at the end of that sentence. That’s cool, that’s your right. You might even disagree with that statement altogether and be scrolling down to the comments section right now to tell me about how you disagree vehemently with…  Oh, wait.  

Earlier this year in April, the legal proceedings against Bonds related to his grand jury testimony in regards to the BALCO scandal came to an end when Bonds’ conviction of perjury was overturned by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals  Bonds then filed a grievance alleging collusion against the MLB when he wasn’t signed after the 2007 season and an arbitrator ruled against Bonds in August, putting an end to all of Bonds’ baseball-related legal issues.

With that book closed, the big question was whether Bonds would start on a new one, in the form of coaching.  Bonds already showed up for a week during the Giants’ spring training in 2014 and earned some rave reviews from Giants hitters in helping them with some mechanical adjustments. Bonds had publicly stated that he was considering going into coaching. With the past behind him, surely a team would be interested in the all-time home run leader helping to coach their hitters, right? Would it be the Giants? Seems likely, right?

As an anecdotal aside, I moved to San Francisco in 2004 and saw Bonds play in person quite a few times. The Giants lost more games than they won and I went to quite a few games where the only real excitement was in the form of Bonds’ at bats as he chased down Babe Ruth’s home run record and then Hank Aaron’s. I was also at Game 4 of the 2014 NLCS against the Cardinals when Bonds threw out the first pitch. While there were surely some people who weren’t cheering for him there, it was LOUD and the place was shaking with cheers of “Barry.” Giants fans, on the whole, will probably forgive Bonds for a lot more than Google Glassing.  

All that being said, it’s not terribly difficult to understand why the Giants as an organization wouldn’t want the attention that comes with hiring Bonds on as a hitting instructor. No team is more familiar of the nature of Bonds’ DNGAF relationship with the sports media than the Giants. Well, except maybe the Yankees, who’ve been dealing with A-Rod for a bit. The same A-Rod who worked with Barry Bonds last offseason and had quite the bounce-back season this year. 

Where goes Bonds, so goes an army of takes of the hottest order and, while it’s one thing to have Bonds swing by for a week of spring training or throw out a first pitch, it’s another to hire him on as a part or full time staff member. But surely there would be a team interested in having Bonds help its players up their hitting game, right? 

Now, how important hitting coaches are is a topic that is up for debate. It’s certainly not something that we can evaluate with statistics and the success of hitting coaches will have to remain somewhat anecdotal. All that being said, every team employs one, and if you are going to employ a hitting coach, it would certainly make sense to at least let one of the best hitters of all time take a crack at the job. After all, Bonds was renowned for his approach to at bats, and some of that, preparation, working counts, strategy, etc., is certainly something that can presumably be taught. If Mark McGwire could come back and coach, first under the Cardinals, then the Dodgers and now the Padres, surely a team would be interested in the only player above McGwire on the single-season home run leaderboard?

Enter the Marlins. The one franchise in the MLB that really kind of deserves the vitriol that’s directed towards it. Oh, hey Marlins, what’s that? Now, you’re shopping José Fernández just one year after signing Giancarlo Stanton to a 13-year deal and looking like you were at least trying to make a move towards respectability? Of course you are.

Now, nothing is confirmed yet, but we can at least appreciate the beauty of this deal for the parties involved. One of the best players to ever pick up a bat, but also one of the most controversial, gets to return to the sport that he dominated for so long thanks to a team that is as crazy as the sculpture it has in center field. Jeffrey Loria and the Marlins don’t care about what the media thinks.   

We’re talking about a team that extended its manager in 2014, then fired him after a little over a month into the 2015 season, only to replace him with their general manager who had basically never coached baseball before, and then fired him after the same season. Ouch, yes, but this is a team that just doesn’t care. So they can afford to take a flyer on Bonds helping out their offense. If there is a team that truly embodies the spirit of DNGAF, it would be the Miami Marlins. You also may have heard: the Marlins’ offense did not do so well last year, so why not give it a shot? 

In closing, here’s a take I think everyone can get on board with: Giancarlo + BLB = OMG!!!