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Grand finale Baseball's best on display on the final weekend
Updated: Monday October 08, 2001 1:42 AM
NEW YORK (AP) -- Baseball's closing weekend was one to remember. Barry Bonds pushed his single-season home run record to 73. Seattle tied a 95-year-old mark for most wins in a season. Rickey Henderson got his 3,000th hit. And baseball said goodbye to Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn. Bonds got the weekend of records, milestones and celebrations started on Friday night, hitting his 71st home run to break Mark McGwire's 3-year old record. For good measure, he also hit his 72nd that night. On Sunday, the last day of the regular season, Bonds hit his 73rd, extending his record and finishing a remarkable year. His .863 slugging percentage easily surpassed Babe Ruth's record of .847 set in 1920. "It seems Babe ain't going to have many records, is he?" Giants manager Dusty Baker said. "It's the greatest year I've seen from a single player." Bonds hit a homer every 6.52 at-bats this season, breaking the record of a home run every 7.27 at-bats set by McGwire in 1998. Down the road in San Diego, Henderson hit a bloop double to right for his 3,000th hit. The milestone came in front of more than 60,000 fans who filled Qualcomm Stadium to say farewell to Gwynn, an eight-time NL batting champion and lifetime .338 hitter.
Henderson, who had broken Ty Cobb's career runs record Thursday by scoring his 2,246th, was mobbed by his teammates at second base. One of the first to hug him was Gwynn. In the ninth inning, Gwynn grounded out sharply to shortstop on the first pitch he saw as a pinch hitter. After running out his final grounder, Gwynn returned to the dugout and hugged each of his teammates. In a postgame ceremony, he shook hands with fans along the first- and third-base lines, then circled the field. He addressed the crowd for nearly 17 minutes. "It's been unbelievable," Gwynn said. "Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine I'd be standing here after 20 years feeling good about a decision I made a year and a half ago. But I do. I feel I've done all I can do as a baseball player." On Saturday night, fans in Baltimore said farewell to Ripken, who played in his 3,001st and final game in front of a sellout crowd at Camden Yards that included former President Clinton and commissioner Bud Selig. The Seattle Mariners, who lost Sunday to Texas, ended the season with 116 wins -- tying the 1906 Chicago Cubs' team of Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance fame. That Chicago team went 116-36-3. There was a bit of history for the Atlanta Braves, too. They clinched their 10th straight division championship on Friday with a victory over Florida -- the first pro sports team to win 10 division titles in row. The Boston Celtics (1957-65) and Los Angeles Lakers (1982-90) captured nine straight in the NBA. On Sunday, the Houston Astros beat St. Louis 9-2 to take the NL Central title from the Cardinals on the last day of the season. "Clinching on the last day is very exciting," said Shane Reynolds, who got the win for the Astros. "It is one of the highlights of my career." Not everyone took part in the celebratory weekend, though. Arizona's Randy Johnson needed 11 strikeouts to tie Nolan Ryan's 1973 record of 383. Since the Diamondbacks clinched the NL West on Friday, manager Bob Brenly decide to give Johnson off Sunday. Johnson finished with 372, third best all-time behind Ryan and Sandy Koufax (382 in 1965).
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