Saturday, July 28, 2007


SAN FRANCISCO, Jul. 28, 2007 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) --
Barry Watch: Day 7. Finally.

A week ago, this seemed like such a good idea. Two Thursdays ago, Barry Bonds hit two home runs at Wrigley Field in Chicago. With that burst of youth, he moved himself two home runs away from tying Hank Aaron for the most prized number in sports, 755, the home-run record. It seemed like such a good idea to go witness history.

Then a week went by, a homerless week, a joyless week, a grumpy week.

'Hey, we're trying to work here,' one ill-tempered Barry Bonds teammate grumbled Friday afternoon at several cranky reporters as everybody tried to get a little closer to Barry Bonds before the game. Hey, what would you expect? Giants players were sick of seeing reporters, and reporters were equally sick of seeing Giants players. One homerless week. It was like a long, long vacation with relatives you don't like.

Then the game began, and there was a moment. Finally. First inning, at 9:28 Central time, Bonds faced Florida pitcher Rick Vanden Hurk. On 2-1 pitch he launched a long fly ball just left of center field. Bonds stood at the plate, and watched it go, not out of vanity this time (as it had been so man times before) but because he wanted to see whether it would go.

It did go, more than 400 feet -- 420 feet, they would estimate -- and landed in the third row. The fans cheered wildly. And then Barry Bonds for the 754th time in his amazing and divisive career trotted around the bases in that familiar way, as if he were stomping around and hoping to wake up the neighbors downstairs.

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This story has not been what so many of us expected. Sure, we all knew that the Bonds chase would be fraught with suspicions, uneasiness, anger, confusion, boos, cheers.

What we could not know was that it would be so much about growing old.

This was supposed to be a quintessentially American story, like the story of Willy Loman or Huey Long or something. This was the story of a brilliantly talented and difficult man who chased after glory with white-hot passion. The common telling of the tale goes like this: During the 1998 season, Barry Bonds saw how a nation swooned over Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa and the way they smashed home runs throughout that summer. Bonds had been the best player of his generation, a blend of power and speed and patience. But he had never been loved.

Of course, he had never acted as if he wanted to be loved. Bonds had always been a thorny character who managed all at once to alienate teammates and offend baseball fans, and he seemed to enjoy doing it.

Funny thing, though. Everybody wants to be loved. Bonds transformed himself after 1998 from a dancer to a puncher. He spent six hours a day in the gym. He put on pounds of hard muscle. His neck thickened to the circumference of an oak tree. His head grew.

He became a cartoon superhero; and he began hitting home runs at a pace unknown in baseball history. He hit 73 of them in one season. He hit home runs so often, so far, that he turned the entire game inside out -- teams surrendered to his will. One year, pitchers and managers walked him 232 times, more than half of those intentionally. Barry Bonds had become too good for the game.

Then the steroid whispers that had followed Bonds exploded into scandal -- BALCO, leaked grand-jury testimony, denials, an expanded FBI investigation and the arrest of a former trainer, who now sits in jail rather than testify against Barry Bonds.

It went like that for a while -- new charges, fresh denials, lots of opinions. And then Bonds hit those two home runs in Chicago, the home runs that put him in the shadow of Hank Aaron's home-run record, the most hallowed record in American sports. Hank Aaron had earned that record decently, honorably, 30 or 40 homers a year, every year through the Eisenhower years, through the civil-rights movement, through Vietnam, through Watergate.

What a story. It had everything. Emotion. Drama. Controversy. History. Inspiration.

And then Barry Bonds could not even come close to hitting a home run.

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The only man who seemed at ease Friday was Bonds himself. He rushed out to shortstop during batting practice and giddily fielded a few ground balls. He clowned around with teammates. Of course it was hard to tell whether Bonds was really relaxed or whether he was acting relaxed so that people will think he was relaxed or whether he was pretending to be relaxed in an attempt to become relaxed.

This had become the daily game show -- Guess Barry Bonds' Mood.

And it was impossible. All week, Bonds had failed to hit anything resembling a home run, and his disposition fluctuated from testy to enraged to charming to goofy, often in the very same interview session.

'He's tripolar,' is the way one reporter puts it. 'There aren't enough poles for this guy.'

One day, Bonds barked that reporters didn't even believe the lies that they were reporting about him. One day, he sat at his locker and glared people away. One day, he happily told stories about his family tree, including the story of one uncle who tried out for the Chiefs and another uncle who, apparently, 'trained wolves.' When asked what this uncle trained wolves to do, Bonds shrugged. You could guess that as he scanned the reporters around the room, he had a few ideas.

One day he served as pitcher for the Giants' family softball game, and it was quite a scene to see Barry Bonds picking up little children, putting them on the right side of the plate, lovingly tossing balls underhanded as he tried to hit their bats. One day, he called broadcaster Bob Costas a 'little midget man.'

But he spoke loudest on the field where he continuously hit routine ground balls and fouled off meaty fastballs that just a short time ago no one would have dared throw him. He turned 43 this week, in both years and in truth.

'I'm getting old,' he said Friday before the game as he climbed the dugout stairs. He laughed. But he meant it.

When the chase began a week ago there were hard feelings across America -- most of them focused on Bonds, but some of them pointed at the media, commissioner Bud Selig, the entire steroid era and even, impossibly, Henry Aaron himself.

At the end of the week, though, after that long stretch of days when Bonds did not homer, that anger had turned cold. America was bored by the whole thing. It has been hard lately to find an authentic moment anywhere surrounding the chase.

That's why Friday was so surprising. Because what happened was Barry Bonds hit a long fly ball to left. And as he watched home run No. 754 float over the wall, for a moment, he wasn't Barry Bonds, the most controversial, disliked, arrogant, gifted and grudgingly admired baseball player of our time.

No, for a moment anyway, he was a 43-year-old man just wondering whether he still had the distance.

To reach Joe Posnanski, call 816-234-4361 or send e-mail to  jposnanski@kcstar.com. For previous columns, go to KansasCity.com

Newstex ID: KRTB-0102-18487856


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