King of swing of the year
Once upon a time, there was a man called Big Mac, who pounded baseballs off scoreboards, arches and mountain peaks.

This year, in a whole new time, Barry Bonds made home run history in a different way -- occasionally interrupting his march toward 200 walks by smoking a bunch of soaring line drives into a body of water filled with adoring entrepreneurial boat people.

	Barry Bonds had the season of all seasons in 2001.

So maybe this home run extravaganza wasn't quite the same home run extravaganza as the Mac and Sammy Show. But who cares? When we think back on the 2001 baseball season, we'll think of Barry first.

"When Mac hits, the helicopters near the ballpark have to watch out," said Rockies coach-humorist Rich Donnelly. "When Barry hits, he just hits singles that go a lot higher than other guys' singles. When Barry hits, the people in the first and second deck have to watch out for their teeth."

It would take an hour to run through all of Bonds' feats. But we should recall that he became the first man since Babe Ruth to hit a 500th home run completely out of a stadium. He became the first man ever to homer in six games in a row twice in one season (but never once hit a single in six games in a row).

He had 28 more home runs than singles (72 to 44) through Friday. He had nearly 150 fewer one-base hits than the singles champ, Ichiro (191 to 44). He practically even had more extra-base hits (106) than ground balls (114).

It was some amazing year, all right. The home runs just kept on coming.

"It goes in. It goes out," said Giants broadcaster Mike Krukow. "It's like a pitch-back machine. Pitch it in. It comes back. That's Barry."

Yet even though he found it almost impossible to hit a ball to the infield, when he came to the plate, teams used more shifts than the St. Louis Rams.

"I've seen shortstops behind second base and third basemen who looked like they were playing short left," teammate Benito Santiago said. "But I haven't seen the one shift that might work -- outfielders floating in balloons, or maybe circling in gliders."

The most amazing part of it, though, was that he somehow hit all these homers even though it seemed as if you never saw the guy swing the bat. You'd watch those highlights of his four walks a night. Then, on the stat sheets, you'd notice he'd miraculously hit a couple of more home runs.

"Does he ever swing and miss?" Donnelly wondered. "It's gotta be the fewest swings and misses by a guy with a million homers. Most guys foul pitches back. Barry 'fairs' them forward. You hit more home runs that way."

So now Barry gets to sit around the King of Swing club room with the other men who got to hold the greatest home run records of them all -- the Babe and Hank, Maris and McGwire. Imagine those club meetings.

"Well, Babe would probably burp a lot," Donnelly guessed. "And Hank and Roger wouldn't say much. And Mac and Barry would be giving the other guys hot foots. Either that or giving the guys doing the interviews hot foots."

Win Mill of the year
OK, now that that home run stuff is out of the way, this just in: The greatest record of this year wasn't even set by anybody named Barry. The greatest record of the year was set by 25 guys named Ichiro, Bret, Freddy and Kazuhiro.

Yes, in case you hadn't noticed, there hasn't been this much summer excitement in Seattle since Starbucks added outdoor seating. Last time we looked, ladies and gentlemen, the Seattle Mariners were up to 115 wins with two games to go.

	“	If I were Pat Gillick, I would trade Edgar Martinez, Freddy Garcia and Ichiro ... and maybe next year they'll go undefeated. ”
		— Alex Rodriguez on the Mariners

How hot were they? Heck, they were 70 games over .500 -- a plateau no team has reached since the '54 Indians.

How hot were they? Sheez, they'd outscored their poor, semi-defenseless opponents by 300 runs -- making them a threat to join the '98 Yankees as the only plus-300 teams since the '39 Yankees.

How hot were they? Incredibly, the Mariners' road record (59-22) was better than anyone else's home record.

How hot were they? Nobody summed it up better than Indians manager Charlie Manuel after his team had survived another harrowing game against this juggernaut.

"I don't know what Seattle has going on over there," Manuel said. "But they ought to be out in the streets looking for wallets."

And the funny thing is, people are still trying to figure out how the secret to all this success was related to waving goodbye to three guys named Griffey, Johnson and Rodriguez.

"If I were Pat Gillick," said A-Rod, "I would trade Edgar Martinez, Freddy Garcia and Ichiro ... and maybe next year they'll go undefeated."

KKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK-Mart of the year
We don't know about you. But we'd rather paint the Golden Gate Bridge with a toothbrush than hit against Randy Johnson.

Especially on the unforgettable evening of May 8, when the Unit struck out 20 Reds in nine way-beyond-human innings, only to have the game thunder into extra innings without him.

So amazingly, Johnson didn't even get a win out of this. More amazingly, the number crunchers of America spent the next week in furious debate over the absurd question of whether this performance would make it into the record books. (Correct answer: Of course! What are you, nuts?)

But we choose to remember other stuff about this game. Like the insane numbers, for instance:

Johnson faced 29 hitters and whiffed 20. He struck out 10 of the first 13 hitters and eight of the last nine. Of the 72 pitches the Reds swung at, they either missed or fouled off 63 of them. And his 124th and final pitch of the night was clocked by Pacific-Northwest radar at 98 miles per hour.

"It felt like we were 12-year-olds," said the Reds' Sean Casey, "and he was 18."

The biggest crisis of the night, in fact, was not whether this was a record. It was that the K Corner portion of the scoreboard at Bank One Ballpark only had room for 16 K's.

No problem. They eventually just tacked the last four paper K's onto the side of the board.

"They were ready to start bringing in paint," said teammate Curt Schilling. "If he'd gone out for the 10th, they would have started painting the stadium."

Tag team of the year
For most of this year, Schilling and Johnson made up America's greatest tag team since The Samoans.

But on July 18 and 19, they made true tag-team history -- by becoming the first 300-strikeout men ever to pitch for the same team in the same game.

	Johnson

	Schilling

That wasn't the original plan, of course. But two innings into Schilling's start July 18 in San Diego, the Padres pulled the old exploding-light-tower trick. That caused the game to be frozen in time for a day and forced Schilling out of the game.

Hey, it seemed like a great idea at the time -- until Johnson came in to relieve him and produced one of the most unforgettable box scores in the history of small print:

Schilling 2 0 0 0 0 1
Johnson 7 1 0 0 1 16

Johnson may have whiffed 14 of the first 17 hitters. And that may have enabled him to pull off a near-impossible daily double -- by adding the record for most strikeouts in a game by a reliever to his record for most strikeouts by a starter.

But after they came within one Wiki Gonzalez single (off Johnson) of throwing the first combined perfect game ever, Schilling had just one question for his Unitness.

"I asked him who was getting the win," Schilling said. "I mean, he gave up the hit. Didn't he?"

Comebacks of the year
Second prize: Pirates vs. Astros, July 28. Talk about no shot ... the Pirates trailed this game by six runs -- with two outs in the ninth and nobody on base.

Only one team in National League history (180,000 games worth) had ever come back to win a game in that situation, let alone a team that hadn't even scored six runs in a game in 17 straight games. But somehow, the Pirates then scored seven runs without making an out -- in a span of just 16 pitches -- capped by a grand slam by Brian Giles off Billy Wagner, who (of course) hadn't blown a save in almost three months.

Asked if he'd ever seen anything like this before, Giles replied: "Yeah, when we were 12. Our Little League team was down, 12-2. With two outs. We dropped an 11-spot and won. Then we all went to Dairy Queen to celebrate."

First prize: Indians vs. Mariners, Aug. 5. So what were the odds that a team 50 games over .500 would blow a 12-run lead with seven outs to go? Uh, somewhere around the odds of Bud Selig jamming with Aerosmith some night at the MTV Video Awards.

But it happened (the comeback, not the jam session), right there on the ESPN television network, in this classic game.

No team had blown a 12-run lead and lost in 76 years. And the Indians hadn't scored three runs in an inning in over a week (64 innings, eight games), four runs in an inning in more than two weeks (125 innings, 15 games) and five runs in an inning in almost three weeks (154 innings, 18 games).

So obviously, they then scored three, four and five in back-to-back-to-back innings, in the seventh, eighth and ninth, to tie it -- and eventually won in 11.

It's two months later, and we're still talking about this game and shaking our heads. So what does that tell us about the great sport of baseball? "It tells me I have to buy a lot more Lotto tickets," said Cleveland's Omar Vizquel, whose bases-loaded triple with two outs in the ninth pulled the Indians even, "because you never know. They say one out of every 30 million people win the big jackpot. I think that's better odds than the odds of us winning that game."

Injuries of the year
Third prize: Marlins pitcher A.J. (No-Hit) Burnett burned his pitching hand in May while ironing -- his jeans. A few days later, he still managed to throw one of the wildest no-hitters ever, complete with the most baserunners (10, on nine walks and a hit batter) in any no-hitter since a Nolan Ryan walkathon on Sept. 28, 1974.

Ah, but it was still a no-hitter, leading teammate Cliff Floyd to predict that given the superstitious nature of the modern ballplayer, "there might be a lot of guys with tape around their hands, going out to pitch after that."

Second prize: A's infielder Mario Valdez had to go on the disabled list in May with a bruised left lateral condoyle (which is rumored to be somewhere inside his leg). And how did he injure it? Stepping off the team bus at the hotel.

"From now on, I'm not taking the bus," Valdez said. "I'm going to ride a bicycle."

First prize: Padres pitcher Adam Eaton missed a May 31 start against the Astros because he stabbed himself in the stomach with a paring knife.

While opening a DVD.

Eaton was smart enough to label this fiasco as "a bonehead move." But Week in Review felt compelled to check with the bigwigs at Blockbuster Video to determine just how boneheaded it really was.

"Usually," Randy Hargrove, director of corporate communications for Blockbuster, told us, "when you have a DVD injury, you go for a manicure, not to the emergency room."

Bobbleheads of the year
It's shorter than Casey Candaele. It wiggles more than Madonna. And it can sell out any ballpark in America way faster than a visit by Barry Bonds.

We're referring, of course, to the baseball giveaway item of the year -- the indomitable, irrepressible, apparently irreplaceable bobblehead. Which is not to be confused with what used to happen any time somebody hit a ground ball to Butch Hobson.

Thanks to loyal reader David Hallstrom, we know that 45 active players and two managers were honored with their own personal bobblehead day this season.

Also thanks to Hallstrom -- who kept way too close track (for a sane person) of how the bobblehead honorees fared on their day -- we know that the bobbleheads would have finished 19th in the major leagues in the batting race (.325). And 12th in on-base percentage (.419). And first in ERA (0.00 in two starts, by Randy Johnson and Jeff Weaver).

We also know that, heading into Mark McGwire's critical second bobblehead day of the year this weekend, the bobbleheads had been outhomered by Mike Hampton (7-6). But at least they hit a lot better than last year's bobbleheaders, who went 0 for the year (0 for 6).

There were many great moments in bobbleheading this year. So let's relive just a few:

April 21, Jim Thome Bobblehead Day: One minor problem arose with this day. The human Jim Thome got off to such a slow start, he had just six more hits (as in 6 for 47) than his bobblehead. So he wasn't even in the lineup on his own day. But thanks to the power of the bobblehead, he pinch-hit in the ninth, stayed in the game, then pumped a game-winning home run in the 11th. So much for that slump. "He was just laying low," theorized teammate Paul Shuey, "until his bobblehead day."

May 20, Larry Dierker Bobblehead Day: The bad news was, the Astros lost a one-run game to the Reds on their manager's bobblehead day. The worse news was, the manager announced he was jealous of his bobblehead.

"It's better looking than I am," Dierker said. "You can't see any of the wrinkles or gray hair."

Sept. 27, Larry Bowa Bobblehead Day: The bad news for the Phillies was, they, too, lost a one-run game to the Reds on their manager's bobblehead day. The good news was, at least they drew 38,062 paying customers, biggest crowd since the Yankees left town in July.

Best anyone can tell, only one person in Philadelphia didn't want a Bowa bobblehead -- his longtime friend and coach, John Vukovich.

"What do I need one of those for?" Vukovich says. "All I have to do is look in the dugout and I can see the real thing, bobbing away."

July 28, Ichiro Bobblehead Day: There was no more coveted bobblehead than an Ichiro bobblehead. Before the Mariners gave away this baby, the local Ichiromaniacs camped outside Safeco Field for days.

But was it worth it? You betcha. For one thing, an Ichiro bobblehead is still going for 102 bucks on eBay. For another, the real Ichiro was clearly so inspired by his bobbleheadedness, he went 3 for 4, with a stolen base and two RBI, in front of the usual packed, bobbleheading house. Only Ichiro and Sammy Sosa got three hits on their bobblehead day.

Manager Lou Piniella, who scarfed up one of the bobbleheads for his wife, gave this tremendous appraisal of Ichiro's afternoon:

"The heads might have been bobbing in the stands," Piniella said. "But his wasn't bobbing at home plate."

Ichiro-mania of the year
Hey, you'd have camped out for days, too, if the great Ichiro played in your town.

Those 241 hits of his are more than Matt Williams and Junior Griffey combined. And that lightning bolt you thought you saw in the northern sky was actually one of his throws from right field flashing by.

	Ichiro

So let's review a few landmark moments in Ichiro-mania.

The beam of light: For months, we'd heard about the bionic throwing arm of Ichiro. But on April 11, we finally got to witness it in real American life. Oakland's Terrence Long tried to go from first to third on a single -- and was the most shocked man on our soil when Ichiro unfurled a 200-foot laser that nailed Long at third by 10 feet.

"When he made that throw, my arm twitched," said Jay Buhner. "I've got to go ice it now, just thinking about that throw."

The big city: On April 24, Ichiro made his first visit to always-hospitable Yankee Stadium. Afterward, he was asked what he thought of those noted ambassadors of good will, the Yankees fans.

Ichiro ruminated on that thought for a moment, then replied: "They're very polite." Compared to what? The Japanese press corps?

Northern exposure In May, Ichiro arrived in Canada for the first time to meet the Blue Jays. After getting his mandatory two hits in his first game north of the border, he was asked by the Toronto media crew how he liked Canada so far.

"Your national anthem," he replied, "is a little long."

Off his rocker: Then, in August, it was time for another major milepost -- Ichiro's first at-bat ever against John Rocker, as the Ichiro historians in the seats buzzed noticeably.

"I heard the crowd," Ichiro said. "I thought John Rocker must be very popular here."

Throwback player: It may have been Ichiro's bat that made him famous. But his arm drew the oohs and aahs. There was the day in September, for instance, when Texas' Mike Young couldn't even score from third on a single to right because he was so intimidated by Ichiro's arm.

And there was a similar moment in August, when Detroit's Jose Macias never budged from third on what looked like a routine sacrifice fly -- as Ichiro e-mailed a throw home so perfect that catcher Tom Lampkin never had to move his glove.

"He threw a strike from right field," said pitcher Paul Abbott afterward. "I have trouble throwing strikes from 60 feet, 6 inches."

Sweet swingers of the year
They get paid to pitch. But it was way more fun to watch Mike Hampton and Livan Hernandez hit this year.