It was all worth it, though, just to produce GM Brian Cashman's quip about Keisler's run of bad luck: "He's snakebit."

Bondage of the year
It's getting a little ridiculous, what Barry Bonds is doing to this sport of his.

	He's pretty good: Bonds is headed for second his straight MVP Award and fifth of his career.

A .400 on-base percentage used to be pretty good. But it wouldn't get you with 180 percentage points of Barry.

We used to think 100 walks was amazing, too. Barry might draw 200.

Remember when we used to compliment 38-year-old guys for hitting .270? Barry is hitting .370.

Only three mortals in the National League had a slugging percentage over .600. Barry thinks you're in a slump if you're not slugging .800.

It's a farce. Get this man some higher league he can move up to so he can stop toying with this one. He's so beyond the rest of his peers, you can barely describe it. But a lot of people tried anyway this year.

Whiffmasters of the year
What stands 13 feet, 2 inches tall, pitches with both hands, just got through striking out 649 hitters and finished the year 47-12?

Why, it's America's greatest tag team since The Von Erichs -- Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling.

Their regular-season reign of terror is over now. After 27 double-figure strikeout games. After three 17-strikeout games, a 16, a 15, two 14s, two 13s and three 12s. After 10 starts allowing three hits or fewer.

How'd you like to have been a hitter facing these two co-aces?

Debut of the year

The good news for perennial minor-league star Ron Wright was that, after nine professional seasons, he finally made it to the big leagues this year. The bad news was, if his first game was supposed to be the end of his storybook journey, he'd like to fire the author immediately. On April 14, Wright was the Mariners' starting DH. His three at-bats went like this: strikeout, double play, triple play. So in three at-bats, he somehow made six outs. One of which was a 1-6-2-5-1-4 triple play in which Wright was thrown out trying to make it to second for the final out. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, he was the first player to hit into a triple play in his big-league debut since Leo Foster did it for the Braves on July 9, 1971. Bret Boone's sympathetic words afterward to Wright, who was sent back to farm land from whence he came the next day: "I said, 'Hey dude, that was bad.'"

Gum rapper of the year
Next time you go to the mall, you might see more than a shoe store. You might see a Chew Store.

Hey, it's practically inevitable, now that a piece of Luis Gonzalez's used bubblegum has sold for (gulp) $10,000. That actually happened, here in the world we live in, a few months back. And we were pretty sure it was a clear sign of the impending demise of modern civilization --until one of our favorite demented baseball minds, the now-retired Casey Candaele, convinced us otherwise:

"Now people won't be so mad when they step on a piece of gum and they find it on the bottom of their shoes," Candaele said. "They'll actually be happy. They'll go do a DNA test and see whose gum it really was.

"And it will help the pollution problem. People won't be throwing gum around on the streets anymore. After they chew it, they'll save it and store it -- so they can sell it in a pinch. So see? This will actually be good for us.

"And it will help with the tobacco problem, because everyone will be chewing gum instead of tobacco. So see? Everybody thought this was bad. Actually, it's really going to be great. Everybody thought this meant the demise of civilization. It's actually brought us to a new level. We've had the Ice Age and the Bronze Age. Now we have the Gum Age. Or if it's sugar-free, the Sucrose Age. It's gonna be great."

Save of the year

You would think that cheap saves don't come any cheaper than Willie Banks' July 23 save of a dramatic 22-4 game. But amazingly, Banks doesn't win our Cheapest Save of the Year award. Nope, that honor goes to Rangers reliever Randy Flores -- who got a save of Texas' 9-6 win over the Astros on June 14 without throwing a strike. How does that happen? We'll tell you how. Flores entered the game with two outs in the ninth, Richard Hidalgo on first base and Orlando Merced at the plate. He threw one pitch. Catcher Pudge Rodriguez then picked Hidalgo off first to end the game. And presto, Randy Flores had just earned his first career save ... without retiring a hitter. "Just the way we choreographed it in spring training," Flores chuckled.

Quadruple threats of the year
Babe Ruth never had a four-homer game. Hank Aaron never had a four-homer game. Mark McGwire never had a four-homer game.

Heck, until we turned our calendars to May this year, nobody had had a four-homer game in nine years.

And then, of course, two guys had one in three weeks. That's baseball.

Mike Cameron hit four on May 2. So Shawn Green had no choice but to hit four himself on May 23. What a sport.

The great Sultan of Swat Stats, SABR home run historian David Vincent, tells us that until Cameron stepped to the plate at Comiskey Park that night, there had been 39,256 home runs, 2,400 multihomer games and 100 three-homer games since the last four-homer game in baseball, by Mark Whiten, on Sept. 7, 1993.

And then, for reasons you'd need Miss Cleo to explain, Mike Cameron hit four homers in four at-bats, four homers in five innings, four in seven swings.

"The pitcher," Cameron told Year in Review, "was just looking at me like, 'No way. What am I gonna throw now? I know I've gotta throw something, but what am I gonna throw?' It was a weird feeling, man."

Then there was Green, who had hit three home runs all season when he stepped off the plane in Milwaukee before game No. 45. He then proceeded to hit two in his next game, four two days later and 10 over a week. (He joined Frank Howard in the 10 Homers in a Week Club, if you're wondering.)

And both of our four-homer horsemen still can't figure out where all those home runs came from. Maybe they were possessed by the retired spirit of Bob Horner or Rocky Colavito.

"It feels like it's not me doing this," Green said. "It's like it's someone else, and I'm along for the ride."

"It was unbelievable," Cameron said, the morning after his four-homer eruption. "It's still unbelievable. I'm just laughing about it. I can't stop. I think I was laughing in my sleep last night. I was like, 'No way I did that.'"

Aw, sure he did. That's baseball.

Tie-up of the year
When we comb through the classic All-Star Game images in our memory banks some day, what will we see? Pete Rose squashing Ray Fosse. Reggie pounding one off the Tiger Stadium light tower. Johnny Callison homering off Dick Radatz. And of course, your chilling All-Star memory from 2002:

Bud Selig throwing up his hands in bewilderment after being informed his managers had run out of healthy people to pitch ... with the game still tied.

What a mess. But we figure we have two choices when we look back on the debacle that this night became: 1) We can heed the words of NL manager Bob Brenly and remember that we "got everything you could ask for in an All-Star Game -- except a winner." Or 2) we can be grateful that it gave Jay Leno and David Letterman enough material for a month.

The best of the late-night All-Star quips:

Frozen ropester of the year
They always said Ted Williams had ice in his veins. Now he's just turned the tables a little. His veins are in ice. Once, the sight of Williams' sweet swing gave us chills. Now we're giving him chills.

So as long as we're in the midst of one giant Leno-Letterman monologue, might as well recall their top five lines on the Frigid Splinter:

5. From Letterman: "The only other thing the Red Sox have on ice indefinitely, besides Ted Williams, is their bottle of World Series victory champagne."

4. From Leno: "California's now in a Stage Two power alert. So please, if you're planning to freeze any Hall of Fame baseball players, wait until the off-peak hours."

3. From Letterman: "I get up in the morning, and I'm watching the Martha Stewart show, and she's showing you how to properly thaw Ted Williams."

Doubleheader of the year

All day-night doubleheaders are a long day's journey into insanity. But on July 23, the Red Sox and Devil Rays staged one of the most incomprehensible doubleheaders ever played. And not just because, in the middle of it, Willie Banks saved a 22-4 game. In Game 1 that afternoon, the Devil Rays jumped ahead, 4-0. Then, over a period of close to 11 hours, the Red Sox outscored the Devil Rays, 26-ZILCH. That's 26 unanswered runs, friends. In one day. The last time a team scored 26 runs in a row, according to the Elias Sports Bureau, it was the 1995 Orioles -- and it took them five days. But that wasn't even the most amazing part of this doubleheader. After all that -- after giving up 26 unanswered runs, after losing their 10th game in a row to the Red Sox, after not scoring a run for almost 11 hours -- the Devil Rays somehow scored five runs in the ninth inning of Game 2. And won it, 5-4. Asked to recall all that by the St. Petersburg Times' Marc Topkin, Rays catcher Toby Hall was physically and mentally unable to do so. "It was a blur," Hall said. "It was like I had a concussion back there."

2. From Leno: "The son of Ted Williams wants to freeze Ted's body to save his DNA. But the daughter says that is against Ted's wishes. The son wants to freeze him, the daughter wants to cremate him, and Anna Nicole Smith wants to marry him."

And the No. 1 quip, from Letterman: "Ted Williams' daughter wants to cremate him, and his son wants to freeze him. Bud Selig stepped in and declared it a tie -- and said they'd stuff him."

Elected unofficial of the year
If there was one thing more screwy than the All-Star Game itself this year, it was, of course, the annual carnival that is the All-Star Voting System.

Until literally the last couple of weeks before the close of voting, the leading All-Star vote-getters in the National League outfield were Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Vladimir Guerrero and, of course, Armando Rios.

Uh, Armando Rios?

Hey, you've got us. In fact, you've got him. How did a man who had no home runs and nine RBIs in the first half hang in there among the leading vote-getters for all those weeks? How did he still manage to finish with more votes than Shawn Green, Larry Walker, Gary Sheffield or his own, massively more heralded teammate, Brian Giles?

"Maybe," Rios told the Beaver County Times' John Perrotto, "it's like the Broward County election. Maybe the space to punch my name is lined up wrong and the votes that are going to me should be going to Barry or Sammy."

Personal touch of the year
We now present a list of just some of the people who have never hit a grand slam and a three-run home run in the same game. You may have heard of one or two of them:

Barry Bonds, Sammy Sosa, Junior Griffey, Juan Gonzalez, Jeff Bagwell, Gary Sheffield, Mike Piazza, Larry Walker, Todd Helton and Jason Giambi.

But on June 2, Phillies pitcher Robert Person -- playing for a team that had gotten no extra-base hits from any position player with the bases loaded all season -- somehow hit a slam in the first inning against the Expos, then hit a three-run bomb in the fifth.

It was quite a sight, all right -- particularly for Person's incredulous teammates. Here's how our favorite Phillies outfielder-quipsmith, Doug Glanville, reviewed it:

Lefttist of the year
Speaking of unlikely homers, they don't get much more improbable than this:

On May 23, that 150-pound switch-hitting Marlins mighty mite, Luis Castillo, did something he assured us he'd never done in his life -- not even in tee ball: He hit a home run left-handed. In the 1,772nd left-handed at-bat of his career.

Not that Castillo was exactly A-Rod from the right side, either, you understand. He hadn't hit a home run from any side of the plate in 308 at-bats at the time, dating back to Aug. 8, 2001.

And not to suggest that his teammates were astonished by this homer, or anything. But Marlins utility humorist Andy Fox told Year in Review: "I thought we'd figure out the cure for the common cold and eliminate taxes before he hit one left-handed."

Grand slammer of the year
And now the final proof that, as Joaquin Andujar always said, the one word that describes baseball is still "youneverknow:"

	David Eckstein rounds third after his game-winning grand slam in the 14th inning on April 28. The Angels were just 10-14 at the time.

Who led the major leagues in grand slams this year? No, not Bonds, Sosa, Jim Thome or even Robert Person.

It was a 5-foot-6 human dust storm in Anaheim who claimed he'd never before hit a grand slam in his life, even in Wiffle Ball -- Angels leadoff sensation David Eckstein. He somehow hit three of them.

No Angel had hit a grand slam in two years before April 27. Then, of course, Eckstein proceeded to hit a slam two days in a row -- the second of which just happened to win a game with two outs in the 14th inning and his team trailing by a run.

By June 12, Eckstein was up to three grand slams, one more home run of any other denomination. So there might not have been a bigger upset all season than the sight of Eckstein coming to the plate that day with the bases loaded -- and only hitting a three-run triple, instead of his regularly scheduled slam into the first row.

Asked his reaction to this stunning event, teammate Darin Erstad quipped: "I was surprised he didn't get booed for not hitting a home run."

Drug crust of the year
Hoo boy, what a year. It was The Year They Didn't Contract. It was The Year They Didn't Strike. It was The Year They Didn't Finish the All-Star Game. And then, to add to all that levity, along came The Great Steroid Craze.

We don't remember it being your basic laugh riot at the time. But since it did result in about 18 trillion steroid questions being hurled at players from coast to coast, it couldn't help but result in at least a few amusing answers:

Trade of the year
When we look back on the great midseason trades of 2002, we'll think of what? The Scott Rolen deal? The three-team Jeff Weaver-Ted Lilly-Carlos Pena extravaganza? The Bartolo Colon Joins the Don't Contract Us Expos trade?

Well, some might remember those deals first and foremost. But not us. Because the most fun trade all season occurred June 18, when -- just before a Braves-Tigers game in Atlanta -- the Braves traded longtime outfield prospect George Lombard. To (who else?) the Tigers.

Which enabled Lombard to pull off one of the great feats of the 21st century:

Before the same game, he took batting practice with both teams.

First, he took BP with the Braves. Then he was told he was traded, walked across the field, put on a new uniform and took BP again, with the Tigers.

Still later that night, just a few hours after taking batting practice in the same group as Kevin Millwood, he was sent up by the Tigers to pinch-hit against Millwood.

All he did was fly out to right. But then he successfully returned to the dugout -- the Tigers' dugout, fortunately.

"I'm quick," he told Booth Newspapers' Danny Knobler. "I catch on fast. I knew which dugout to go to."

Big EEEEEEEE of the year
Another thing we'll never forget about this year was the bizarre and unexpected Implosion of the Mets.

OK, to not beat the Braves is something all NL East teams can relate to. But how a team that employed Edgardo Alfonzo, Roberto Alomar and Rey Ordonez could lead the league in errors is one of the great upsets of modern times.

Ordonez alone was such an April disaster that, at one point, he committed twice as many errors in two weeks (eight) as he made all season in 1999 (four). It was so weird, it was almost comical -- even, occasionally, to Ordonez himself.

One day, he was in the clubhouse, rolling a ball to his 2-year-old son, Anthony Rey. Whereupon his son proceeded to clank one.

"Just," Ordonez laughed, "like your father."

Marathon men of the year
In the Year the Twins Refused to Go Away, catcher A.J. Pierzynski took that way too literally April 30. He had back-to-back trips to the plate that lasted an amazing 13 pitches apiece. At one point, he even hit a foul ball that was caught by his cousin. Eventually, he fouled off 20 pitches in two at-bats. Which has to be some kind of record.

Pierzynski on what he was thinking during all that: "I was trying," he said, "to hit a foul ball to every person in the stands."