The truth is we the media understand Barry Bonds all too well. He came into this postseason with two historic raps on his baseball resume. The first, that he couldn’t rise to the occasion, has been decimated with some of the most prodigious home runs baseball fans have ever been privileged to witness. He could easily have shed the second–that he was a surly, mean-spirited fellow–even more easily. But he has chosen instead to feather that reputation, to deliver a little payback to the media whose jobs require some meager comment or reflection from Bonds on his historic performance.
Please understand that reaching Barry has never been easy. His corner–think big corner, not small corner–of the Giants locker room is more citadel than clubhouse. It is defended by large men whose job it is to keep everyone–and that would seem to include teammates if any of them actually wanted to share time and space with Bonds–away from Barry. Reporters, nervous nellies that we are, pretty much honor the boundaries. So after the game, there is a slow creep of the press gang until they have reached what is a respectful begging distance. And then begins the painful squirm until Barry will deign to say something, anything and free us from this unhappy servitude.
I do understand that these beseechers are the same men and women who have dissed him and who have speculated that he is baseball’s most successful X-Man, a marvelous mutant from the steroid age. But he is hardly the only player–McGwire, Sosa and most of the big guns of this era have faced the same–whose purity has been questioned. For a player of Bonds’s distinguished baseball lineage (son of Bobby, godson of Willie Mays), the World Series should be a transcendent experience. And once in a while, after he sneers or fires his barbs, he provides a glimmer of a hint that he fully appreciates the magnitude of the occasion and the privilege afforded him.
But not very often. Jack Buck, Fox’s lead announcer whose lineage in his own profession is equally as distinguished as Bonds’s in his, shared a telling story about his first encounter with Barry. Given Bonds’s reputation, Buck was understandably nervous about the prospect until Don Baylor, then a hitting coach for the Cardinals, assured him that Barry was a good guy–just, as we all know, misunderstood. Baylor, one of baseball’s class acts, volunteered to accompany Buck and make the introduction. “Barry, this is Joe Buck, Jack Buck’s son, one of our broadcasters, and he’d like to meet you,” Baylor told the slugger. Bonds barely glanced up while dismissing Buck with a one-shot, “So?” “I walked back to the dugout with my tail between my legs, my pride completely deflated,” Buck recalled. “And it’s always been like that.”
If it’s always been like that for Buck, then you can only imagine what it’s like for all of us lesser lights. Bonds is bright and articulate and could have, had he chosen to, made this World Series an occasion of both professional and personal redemption. He has pointedly chosen not to. This is one of those cases where, in my book, batting .500 is the equivalent of one big fat zero. Fox color commentator Kevin Kennedy, in one of his postgame summations, lamented that we might not see another like Barry Bonds for another 50 or 60 years. And I thought, “Well, that’s some good news.”
Having taken my big swing at Barry, here are some World Series short-shots on my mind:
Old Age: I haven’t heard it mentioned, but has there ever been an older team than the Giants competing in the World Series? In Game 1, every hitter in its lineup was in his 30s and their average was almost 35. The Angels, by contrast, only had one batter, Tim Salmon, who is more than 30 years old.
My Old Age: Nobody trumps me when it comes to enduring affection for the game of baseball. But increasingly that is an abstraction. I feel like I am growing old watching these baseball marathons. Unless I have my belly at a bar and a buddy alongside or a book in hand, I can no longer watch the games from start to finish in seamless fashion. The other night I watched an entire “Sopranos” (I’m beginning to think Chris has a drug problem) and Johnny Cash on “Austin City Limits” (beautiful version of the Gene Autry classic, “That Silver-Haired Daddy of Mine”) without missing a single key moment in the ballgame. I’m sick of hearing Bud Selig say baseball is concerned but can’t find a solution. Start with requiring the batter to stay in the box, and the rest will follow logically.
The DH Divide: I think of myself as a baseball traditionalist, indeed a traditionalist (the kind word, as opposed to stodgy, stick-in-the-mud Neanderthal) in pretty much everything. Yet I do not hold the DH in contempt. To me there is nothing more boring than watching pitchers hit, especially pitchers who have batted a handful of times in their professional lifetime. The strategies it dictates are hardly profound–I understood the double-switch by fifth grade–and watching weak-hitting Benji Molina get intentional walks a la Bonds is not an amusement. Then again, if the Angels’ pitchers weren’t required to hit Wednesday night, that game might still be going on.
“Firefly” and other Fliers: In this time of national crisis, isn’t there a better way to spend our defense money than these flyovers before the game. At the MLS Cup last weekend, a bald eagle swooped into the stadium and it was far more moving and a helluva lot easier on the ears. As for Fox’s ceaseless promotions, I have no need to meet the cast of “Firefly” or any other TV show sitting in primo seats that could have gone to real fans. Even the actors looked embarrassed. So please tell Jack Bauer or John Doe or Cedric the Entertainer to stay home tonight.
Back to Barry: I have found the flaw in Bonds’s game. Last night he failed to tag up on a line drive to right field. On my only trip to Pac Bell Stadium this year, Bonds got hung up off third and failed to tag, in a scoreless game, on a line drive to right field. The only reason I mention it is if by some miracle it comes into play at a critical point in the series, I will have had an ultimate Bill Jamesian moment.
The Confrontation: In last week’s column, I fantasized about a K-Rod-Bonds confrontation with the game on the line. Well, it happened last night with the score tied 3-3, but not exactly as I envisioned. In my imagined version, Rodriguez threw Bonds “nothing but heat.” In reality, he threw him nothing but sliders–five straight–before Bonds grounded out. It was effective, but not as poetic.
