From Bonds’ Wikipedia page:

“In 2003, Bonds withdrew from the MLB Players Association (MLBPA) licensing agreement because he felt independent marketing deals would be more lucrative for him. Bonds is the first player in the 30-year history of the licensing program not to sign. Because of this withdrawal, his name and likeness are not usable in any merchandise licensed by the MLBPA. In order to use his name or likeness, a company must deal directly with Bonds. For this reason, he does not appear in some baseball video games, forcing game-makers to create generic athletes as replacements. These generic video games replacements tended to be white and sometimes had different handedness which was done likely to avoid potential player likeness lawsuits from Bonds.”

32 comments

  3. Um Dowd was not generic. He was the GOAT. He was who they wrote Casey At Bat, The Natural, The Rookie about.

  4. Same as Charles Barkley in the NBA2K games. It’s even funnier this season because he’s on the broadcast team that’s included in the game and he doesn’t even appear in that context.

  10. Wasn’t it in MLB Power Pros, the used the name “Great Gonzales” for Bonds or am I crazy? Cause I played Power Pros so much when I was young and was always confused like “Who tf is Gonzales and why have I never heard of him?”

  15. I always thought mlb the show was doing him dirty when they put home run leaders as “San Francisco giants”

    Didn’t realize it was bonds that did that lol

  18. Kevin Millar also wasn’t in video games, not because he opted out of licensing but because he was barred from MLBPA for scabbing during the strike. So he didn’t appear in or on any MLBPA-licensed product.

  21. Jon dowd is a legend. always picked first in fantasy drafts and then retires next year

  22. Does anyone remember MLB 99 on PlayStation 1? It came out before they knew the rosters for the Devil Rays and Diamondbacks so every player was made up. And there was a player on the dbacks who would hit a HR every at bat. Could bunt it 250 feet too.

  26. Jo(h)n Dowd was also an attorney who was special counsel for the MLB into investigations and one of his higher profile reports is the one that got Pete Rose banned from MLB. He was also involved in review of Sen. Mitchell’s report documenting the steroid era. Always thought the name connection was interesting here and wondered if it were intentional, but apparently Jon Dowd was just one of the production leads.

  27. In the first SNES Griffey game, everyone besides Griffey had a fake name. Each team had a theme, like the Rockies were named after horror icons, the Dodgers were named after LA punk musicians, the Padres were named after UK punk musicians.

    But the Giants were just named after the game’s software team, so Bonds was “S. Pickford.”

  31. MVP Baseball 2005 is one of the best games ever.

    People today won’t realize the struggle to fix up the rosters in that game. There were so many players who didn’t have their real names in the game so you had to manually go in and edit it all. Luckily there were some sites out there that had fully lists of every fake player/scab and who their real life counterpart was.

    That was one of the first times I really searched out message boards.

    I feel like I have memories of making a FAQ back them about the SCABs or I helped enter info in a database or maybe it was making “CAPs” to help people replace those players with the real life versions.

  32. I go to Giants games fairly often, and every now and again you see someone sporting a John Dowd jersey, complete with #51 and everything. Those fans are the realest of them all

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