Friday, June 2, 2006
Barry Bonds dominated the sports headlines in the month of May. The All Star outfielder for the San Francisco Giants has been closing in on the immortal Babe Ruth and his career home run total of 714. There have been a number of curious things about this quest. Lucky for us we have Magi Astrology, which excels in explaining the unusual.
On May 7th, 2006 Bonds hit his 713 career home run, just one home run shy of tying the legendary Babe Ruth. On the precipice of this milestone the U.S. sports media has been hovering in mass. ESPN has interrupted regularly scheduled programs on both television and radio, chronicling his at bats in an effort to capture the historic moment. Unlike the great Babe Ruth who took a mere 4 innings to jump from 713 to 714, Bonds pursuit of the 714 to tie Ruth’s total was painfully slow and anticlimactic. Atypically, it took Bonds thirteen days and 40 plate appearances to hit his 714th. Bonds then took five more games which included 17 at bats and 25 plate appearances to break the record, with his 715th on May 28th, 2006.
During this stretch of time Bonds has been hobbled with various injuries. Everyone from the team Manger to the bat-boys commented on how fatigued he seemed to be. Bonds, one of the most technically sound hitters to ever play the game, had lost his once glorious swing. Since turning age 35, Bonds had been averaging a home run for every 8.3 at bats. This year that has not been the case
While Bonds flailing away at the plate day after day was uncharacteristic, what was most peculiar was the national attention paid to passing the man who was in second place. Bonds was not breaking the all time record, and in fact was far from it. Ruth’s home run record had been surpassed over 30 years ago. On April 8, 1974, Hank Aaron of the Atlanta Braves broke Ruth’s career home run record and went on to extend it to 755 home runs.
A look at his Geocentric Chart CAC with his current Transits clarifies the picture. Bonds has been dealing with the retrograde portion of a looped Pluto transit in opposition to his Mars for the entire season. In our first book, “Astrology Really Works,” we explained that Mars was the ruler of energy and Pluto was the sub-ruler of energy. Using the Magi Principle of Offset, This clash would symbolize lethargy, reduced strength and overall poor physical performance. It most definitely would explain his diminished athletic ability of late.
Transiting Chiron in quincunx with Bonds’ Uranus and is appropriately named a “Milestone” transit in Magi Society interpretation module software. This transit also helps to explain all the noteworthy (Chiron) media attention (Uranus) for this second place chase.
However, this quest for Bonds has also occurred under a cloud of controversy. On going allegations of his use of performance enhancing steroids have severely damaged his public image. While the chase to catch and pass Ruth’s home run total brought Bonds even more notoriety, the majority of the coverage was negative in nature. The transiting Saturn/Chiron midpoint (represented by “hk” in the graphic) is in trine with Bonds’ Uranus. This Saturn midpoint can be tumultuous, even when it is in an enhancement angle. In this case, transiting Saturn/Chiron completes a mystic triangle with Bonds’ Uranus and transiting Chiron. This reflects the intense notoriety generated by this milestone (Chiron in quincunx with Uranus) combined with a pall cast over the proceedings resulting in the sour, joyless media coverage (Saturn/Chiron Heartbreak Midpoint trine Uranus) of what would have otherwise been a jubilant event.
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