I can't help but wonder if with Barry Bonds' return will the intentional walk make a comeback. If you hadn't noticed, the majors decided to give a free pass to Bonds whenever and wherever possible even with the bases loaded once or twice.

In the process, Bonds more than doubled the IBB record albeit for a stat that was not kept before 1955.Here are the all-time single-season leaders in intentional walks. You might note a trend:

Bonds appears seven times among the top fifteen seasons. To make the point even clearer, here are the major-league leaders in intentional walks over the last 15 seasons:

Bonds earned the IBB crown eight times between 1992 and 2004. This year, Pujols leads with the lowest total for a major-league leader in a non-strike year since 1990 and potentially a third as much as Bonds collected last year.

So Bonds' absence has affected the intentional walks total at the top of the food chain, but what about the majors in general? Have the IBB totals dropped off suddenly without Bonds? Let's see…

Here is a table of total intentional walks and plate appearances across the majors with the ratio of IBBs per PA per year for the last fifteen seasons (2005 totals are through last nights games):

You may notice that the IBB rate dropped severely this year, but it is identical to 2000's value, and that was the last year before the majors went walk-crazy all over Bonds. Also, the rates even during the height of walk Bonds fever were lower than the rates up to the early Nineties.

To make the breakdown clearer, here are the totals per decade:

Free pass totals have been dropping steadily since the Seventies, even with the wacky Bonds totals of late. So what does that mean? Baseball seems to be wising up slowly and steadily to the ills of the intentional walk even as they have been bending the standards for the greatest player in the game.

Consider it another Barry Shift.