« Uncollected home runs out to sea »

The Marlins came to San Francisco, and first baseman Carlos Delgado launched a deep homer into McCovey Cove.

And nobody retrieved it. At least not within the duration of the SportsCenter footage.

With Barry Bonds on the shelf, the dinghy ballshaggers must have decided to not skip work for once, since the Giants have no other true left-handed power hitter. When a home run lands in The Cove, it is usually the army of boats that fight over the souvenir.

Not the case anymore. Now they sit outside Bonds' doctor's office and elbow each other for the discarded gauze.

Bonds hit into the water ("splashdown") 31 times in 5 seasons from '00-'04. In that same stretch, his teammates have had 7 and opposing teams have had 8. Total. He doubled up the universe, and added one on for good measure.

This year might be the first year opposing teams splashdown more than the home team. Right now the score is 3-1, with Russ Branyan going deep and wet like a porn star on April 23, Larry Walker on July 9 and Delgado Saturday night. Michael Tucker has the lone Giant splashdown this year, which happened on April 9.

Now for some trivia, which I came up with after crunching the open source data on splashdowns at the Giants' Web site:

1. True or false: At least one other Giant other than Bonds has multiple splashdowns.
2. True or false: A visiting player has hit multiple splashdowns.
3. Which opposing pitcher has given up the most splashdowns to Giants?
4. Which Giants pitcher has given up the most splashdowns to visitors?
5. Which National League team is the only team not to surrender a splashdown?
6. Two teams have given up 5 splashdowns. One is Colorado. Name the other.

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1. True. Luis Gonzalez hit one in '00 and again in '02.
2. True. Felipe Crespo and Michael Tucker both have 2 career splashdowns.
3. John Thomson (twice), then with Colorado. Both came in 2001 to Bonds.
4. Brett Tomko (twice), in '04 with Cliff Floyd and in '05 to Russ Branyan.
5. Pittsburgh.
6. St. Louis.

There have been 49 splashdowns in PNC Park history. Who will hit the 50th, and when?