Word comes tonight from Barry Bonds's agent that Bonds is very unlikely ever to play major league baseball again. No duh. We knew that from the moment the Giants made their intentions clear at the end of 2007. Would I have liked to see Bonds play a few more years in an American League uniform, perhaps under the Tropicana Dome roof or up in Seattle?
I'll answer that with another question: Did I enjoy watching Joe Montana lead the Kansas City Chiefs to, uh, an AFC West title or two? (I'm not even going to look it up.) Did you enjoy it?
Then again, Montana could give a flying fig what we 49ers fans thought. He was by nature and by trade a professional athlete, and his job was to play football. Ditto Bonds: Giants or no, he had the skills to play a few more years and not just add to his 762 but also be very good. But baseball decided to move on. I'm not bitter that the Giants spearheaded that decision.
No, that's the wrong description. The Giants were actually on the lagging end of it: they brought Bonds back in 2007 for one more year when it was fairly clear baseball wanted nothing more to do with him. He was the scapegoat for the steroids era, and when we look back on it we're going to wonder what the hell was going on. Here's my standard boilerplate rant, polished into one sentence: All your heroes of yesteryear -- Willie Mays, Johnny Bench, Pete Rose, and on -- had free access in the clubhouse to amphetamines, as performance-enhancing a drug as there ever was. And no one is bitching and moaning about their records. So shut the hell up about the steroids unless you acknowledge the drug use of previous generations.
That said, Barry Bonds never made it easier for himself. He was arrogant, he was childish, he was petulant, he was goofy. He didn't cater to the press. Not a good combination. He also broke a few rules that, as a baseball player, I find offensive. He hit a home run and did a full spin out of the batter's box. As an outfielder he styled on a few fly balls, at least one of which wasn't a home run, much to Bonds's embarrassment. (Hit by Todd Hundley of the Mets, I believe.) These incidents don't endear Barry to the lunchpail crowd.
But he was so, so, so, so good, and so, so, so, so on our team. He brought me great joy, especially when he threw out the lead run in the ninth inning then hit a home on the first pitch in the bottom of the ninth to win the game. On his birthday.
What the hell. Let's end it right there. Your favorite Barry Bonds moment, please.
