Barry Bonds just soured Yankees fans on George Steinbrenner in 1 brutal story

Opening Day is a time for pomp and circumstance. It's a celebration and a time to embrace nostalgia, while also looking ahead at what is to come as the action gets underway. The Netflix crew tried to do just that during their broadcast of the New York Yankees matchup with the San Francisco Giants.

With Yankees icon CC Sabathia and Giants hero Hunter Pence on the call, they ensured both fan bases had a connection to their past. Then they doubled down by inviting Barry Bonds into the booth, and boy, did Barry have something to say.

"George [Steinbrenner] isn't here anymore, so I can tell the truth," Bonds began. "Well, I would've been a Yankee, but Steinbrenner got on the phone, and he called us, and he told me, 'Barry, we're going to give you the money, the highest paid player at that time. But you have to sign the contract by 2 o'clock this afternoon.' And I said, 'excuse me,' and I just hung the phone up."

"Now I went to go get lunch, and Dennis Gilbert, my agent, was like, ' Do you know what you just did?' I'm like, do you know what he just said? I just said, 'Forget it.'" Bonds recounted, dropping the bombshell that he almost became a Yankee, but was put off by The Boss's ridiculously short deadline.

Bonds would then decide to "go home" to San Francisco and sign with the Giants in 1993, which was the same team he grew up around as his father Bobby, briefly a Yankee himself, spent the first seven years of his career out by the Bay.

As our jaws hit the floor, we were left with so many thoughts to run through, including imagining what a world would look like with Bonds at the forefront of the Yankees' late 90s dynasty, and a reminder that The Boss was nowhere near as infallible as some fans like to purport.

Barry Bonds' George Steinbrenner bombshell has Yankees fans envisioning an alternate reality and questioning The Boss

First, here's a timeline question. Had the Yankees signed Bonds, would the Yankees still have traded for Paul O'Neill? New York sent Roberto Kelly to Cincinnati on November 3, 1992, while Bonds didn't sign with the Giants until December 8. The way he tells the story, it seems that this all happened the same day, but if he was truly going to balk at Steinbrenner's admittedly mafia don-esque deadline, it seems unlikely he'd jump to sign with the Giants that same afternoon. So, does the O'Neil trade become a footnote? Does Paulie get shipped elsewhere? Or did Bonds fall apart first?

Second, while he wasn't hitting 73 homers a year in 1993, he still had two NL MVPs and a pair of 30-30 seasons under his belt. Would the Home Run King have actually have elevated the Yankees any further?

Even before the steroid scandal, Bonds had a very contentious relationship with the media. In the '90s, the New York tabloids were at the peak of their powers, and one has to imagine that the mercurial superstar and the blood thirsty writers would have had some epic clashes. Would those have served as a distraction? Would said distraction have derailed the otherwise stoic clubs and held them back from what they ultimately attained? We'll never know for sure. We do know his father found himself in Anaheim after just one excellent season in New York. Wonder why.

Bonds' recollection serves as an important reminder of Steinbrenner's faults as well. Fans tend to invoke The Boss's memory whenever the club misses a big target or has a slow offseason. What is sometimes forgotten is the chaos he caused.

This story marks one of the first moves Steinbrenner would have made after his lifetime ban from baseball was commuted. In case you forgot, what got him in hot water to begin with was paying a gambler to dig up dirt on one of his own star players, Dave Winfield.

It's often forgotten, but that was actually Steinbrenner's second suspension, with the first coming in 1972 as a result of illegal contributions he made to President Richard Nixon's campaign fund.

It's important to remember that George's banishment came at the end of one of the bleakest periods of Yankees baseball, as his pursuit of star power throughout the 1980s led to a whole lot of empty seasons. It was while he was away from the game that the seeds of the last Yankees dynasty were sown.

"If things go right, they're his team. If things go wrong, they're your team. His favorite line is, 'I will never have a heart attack. I give them,'" former Yankees general manager Bob Watson recalled of his time working under Steinbrenner.

So while fans were frustrated by New York's glacial pace this past offseason and may have lamented that George would have done more than simply run it back, it's important to remember the other side of the coin.

Barry Bonds in pinstripes would have been fascinating, but it also would have been a highly combustible situation that might have derailed the franchise's last glory period before it even began.

It's a fun thought exercise, and we'll never know for sure what would have happened if George had exercised a bit more patience with Bonds, but what we can say for sure is that it would have sent shockwaves around MLB all those years ago.