barry bats 1993

Growing up a young A’s fan in the East Bay in the 90’s and 2000’s, I can conclude without a shadow of doubt in 2021, that Barry Bonds is simply the best baseball player I’ve ever seen in my life. This 20” x 26” pastel drawing is from my 35mm slide photograph, a depiction of Barry in his first season with the Giants during a road trip, on July 4th, 1993. The brilliant free agent signing which brought Barry from Pittsburgh joined him with his dad Bobby (as first base coach), and with Dusty Baker taking over as a first year manager, they cruised to the tune of 103 wins. While hitting his prime, Barry catalyzed the franchise’s success for the next couple decades, including the building of the jewel of a waterfront Ball Park (PacBell) in 2000. I created a smaller pastel artwork for the back of the ‘wearable print’ shirt, a collage style piece of symbols, words and themes which describe the front artwork, and what Barry achieved the rest of his Giants career. I like the earlier years of Bonds’ Giants career at Candlestick, thus the image I chose to draw, because I feel people forget how great he was before the PED allegations. Speed, power, (40/40 in ‘96), gold glove defense, and multiple MVP’s before his numbers surged to video game like heights. Jeremy Cohen, my middle school athletic director, and little league baseball coach corrected me sometime in 1996 or ‘97 when I said Ken Griffey Jr was the best player in baseball. He responded, “No, Barry Bonds is the best player in baseball.” Looking back, I have to agree he was right :)