Posted on 07/20/2007 9:07:10 AM PDT by Chi-townChief
As the ball ripped through the summer sky, much like a syringe injected into soft tissue, a spooky sense of finality settled over Wrigley Field. The villain is going to win, isn't he? A grand jury can't stop him, the commissioner can't stop him, old age can't stop him, and the weight of overwhelming public disapproval can't stop him.
Barry Bonds, creep of creeps, is about to own the mother of all baseball records.
And there's nothing we can do about it except watch and grow physically ill.
''Fans like the game of baseball, regardless of what you guys are talking about and however it's twisted and turned,'' Bonds said after hitting his 752nd and 753rd home runs Thursday, leaving him two away from a regal milestone of which he isn't worthy. ''They enjoy the game of baseball, and people want to see it, regardless of what anybody says.
''They're excited about it. Omar [Vizquel, his San Francisco Giants teammate] came up to me after I pinch-hit [Tuesday] and he said, 'Did you see all of those flashes that went up?' I said, 'No.' And he said, 'Man, it was like a concert out there.'''
No, Barry, it actually was like a funeral out there, with people taking pictures as they would when passing a 10-car pileup. Basically, they think you're guilty as sin of using steroids to reach the plateau of stately Henry Aaron, who didn't use steroids. That's why they booed when you peeked your head out of the dugout, booed louder when you stood in the on-deck circle and booed louder when you stepped into the batter's box. After you hit your homers, they kept booing when you trotted out to left field. They don't like you, Barry. But they also realize breaking the all-time home-run record is history in a perverse context, much the way Paris Hilton is history. Even if fans are recording these moments for posterity, they're doing so while mourning the steroids era and knowing it has tainted the game beyond repair.
The gall to expect gifts All you need to know about Bonds and the dent he left in Cubdom is this: He was whining about the very folks he claims are rooting for his homers. His second-inning blast off Ted Lilly, the first to land on Sheffield Avenue this season, was chased down in the street by 39-year-old Cubs fan Dave Davison. His seventh-inning laser into the basket in left-center field, off an agonized Will Ohman, wound up as a gift for 13-year-old Tyler Olson of Freeport, Ill. For years, Bonds was as rude and fan-unfriendly as any athlete in the land. Until recently, he had no intention of donating any mementos to the Baseball Hall of Fame, saying, ''I'm not worried about the Hall. I take care of me.'' Yet what did he expect the two fans to do with the commemorative balls? Hand them over to him, of course, which neither did. Good for them.
''I was just hoping they would throw the balls back like they said, but I guess they lied,'' Bonds said. ''I was going to put them in my trophy room, but they lied.''
Serves him right. What, he suddenly expects to be showered with love and favors after all the suspicion, the churlishness, the mean spirit? Wrigley crowds aren't always fine representatives of our city, including the idiots who threw garbage on the field the other night after a game-winning hit -- I repeat, game-winning hit -- by Aramis Ramirez. But if this was the last game Bonds ever plays on the North Side, the fans created the perfect tone of disparagement. No one threw anything or tried to jump over the bricks, thank goodness, but, oh, did they pound Bonds with their lungpower. If they weren't chanting ''Cheater! Cheater! Cheater!'' with vigor, they greeted him with a simple ''Barry sucks!''
Midwest knows best The fans in San Francisco are oblivious sheep, blind to the BALCO scandal and the toxic spillage. On the East Coast, Bonds hatred is disproportionate to reality -- sorry, you can't hate a ballplayer more than Osama bin Laden. Here in the heartland, the way Cubdom treated Bonds during his two appearances is most representative of the truest reaction. If he was going to inch toward the record on their turf, the fans were going to punish his eardrums and make them ring on the bus ride to Milwaukee. ''Chicago fans have always been good. They've always been the way they've always been,'' said Bonds, straining to be diplomatic. ''When you're out there in left field, you deal with what you have to deal with. But it's fun. Cubs fans aren't going to change. You respect that.''
There was hope, not too long ago, that a federal grand jury in San Francisco would bust Bonds for perjury. That could have been the impetus for commissioner Bud Selig to suspend Bonds, or consider a Pete Rose lifetime ban, before he passed Aaron. But without the testimony of Greg Anderson, Bonds' personal trainer, the grand jury will have to be extended for yet another term. And with Anderson preferring to stay in jail instead of answering questions about his former client -- which goes far beyond the duty of friendship -- Bonds has no legal obstacles before breaking the record. The feds have put the hot lamps on everyone from Jason Grimsley, the former major-league pitcher caught in a steroids probe, to Kirk Radomski, the former New York Mets clubhouse assistant who says he provided performance-enhancing drugs to dozens of current and former major-leaguers. And they still haven't been able to nail Bonds, the most-wanted suspect in the dirtiest scandal in baseball history, dirtier than even the Black Sox and Rose.
Which is why it pained me to hear Bonds acknowledge, at last, that he can feel the record in his grasp. For now, anyway, he has beaten the feds, the system, the media, the fans, everyone who believes the stench is too wicked.
''It's real now,'' Bonds said. ''I had to get over them switching those baseballs [to the specially marked version]. Any time that happens, I kind of go into a slump. It's tough because you actually really realize something is going on and you don't really want to think about it. You want to think about the opposition and playing the game. But when they stop you for a second and switch baseballs, it's very hard to not know that something is happening right in front of you.''
Next stop: Selig's backyard What's happening next is Selig's worst nightmare. Here comes Bonds, three shy of the virgin ground beyond 755, for three games in the town where the commissioner lives and where Aaron played. Selig has no plans to be at Miller Park for any of the games, starting tonight. Bonds claims not to care about Selig's itinerary and even took a subtle shot at Aaron, who also has said he has no interest in being present when Bonds passes him. ''It doesn't mean anything different than anywhere else,'' he said of Milwaukee.
Not that Bonds would play the rest of the weekend if, say, he hits two tonight and ties Aaron. His week-long trip through the Midwest is grunge work. He will break this record in his beloved San Francisco, perhaps during a seven-game homestand next week, when the amnesiacs will shower him with joy and throw back his home-run balls and gift-wrap the moment in pretty little bows and lengthy ovations.
Meanwhile, here in the real world, the rest of us will wonder what happened to truth, justice and the American way.
Jay Mariotti is a regular on ''Around the Horn'' at 4 p.m. on ESPN. Send e-mail to inbox@suntimes.com with name, hometown and daytime phone number. Letters run Sunday.
Flash photography at a baseball park results in a nice photo of the back of the heads of the people sitting right in front of that photographer.
Hmm...whether people like him or not, it’s a fantastic record.
Teams could walk him at every bat as a protest of the title that he has not earned.
That is true if you are using a cheap camera.
I’m enjoying all the angst surrounding Barry breaking the “most holy” record. It’s funny. I especially like how the mighty commissioner’s “investigation” that was supposed to save the record book has come up pointless. Everybody loved it when the long balls started going out at a huge rate, got attendance back up, ratings back up, revenue back up. And nobody bothered to look at whether MLB’s complete lack of steroid policy might have anything to do with that, until Barry started threatening the most holy record. Now all of a sudden it’s a terrible tragedy, well you gotta sleep in the bed you made people, this is the price you pay for looking the other way 10 years ago.
We will know that He really does’nt have the record, that he cheated and lied and treateed the Fans like Trash. The record will always be Aaron’s. Barry Bonds is a freak.
For decades men have been trying to break The Bambino’s total. The Babe was fueled with hot dogs, booze and babes; so his marks are legit. Maris did his 61 legit and Hank did his total legit.
Bonds is a fraud and he should have been drummed out of baseball; if the figurehead comish’s had any balls.
I think that A-Rod will break the record by then. A-Rod is only 31 and will hit his 500th HR within a few weeks. He's about 150 HR ahead of where Bonds was at age 31 (of course, Bonds had his monster years in his late '30s).
Just think about how many more home runs he would have hit, if only he had cut down on the smoking, the drinking, and the sex, especially in between the innings. ;)
I’m far from alone in predicting Bonds never will be in the Hall of Fame, at least not as a MEMBER. *He will be discussed, along with other cheaters, on a wall devoted to displays about the steroid scandal.)
Cheater.
Instead of throwing the balls back, per tradition, they should have thrown giant Asterisks on to the field.
“The Babe was fueled with hot dogs, booze....”
Wasn’t booze illegal back then?....
People will be trying to toss Ruth’s homers because of the illegal alcohol back then. Of course, Maris and Aaron may also have been hopped up on “greenies”, coca-cola, and cigarettes.
The funny thing is that, personality-wise, Hammerin’ Hank is just about as big an ass-wipe as Barry.
It’s a travesty of a sham.
There was also an interesting analysis the other day of ballpark size; I’ll see if I can find it. The contention was that the new smaller ball parks have as much to do with the home run surge as the roids. Although, they didn’t seem to take into account the short porches in Yankee Stadium and the Polo Grounds where the Babe, Maris, Mantle, Mays, Ott, et al. hit a lot of their homers.
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