San Francisco – Barry Bonds put the gawk in awkward.
The San Francisco Giants slugger eclipsed Babe Ruth on Sunday against the Rockies, blasting his 715th home run in a 6-3 loss to Colorado.
Bonds now sits second on the all-time home run list, 40 shy of Hank Aaron’s record.
Bonds stepped deeper into baseball’s history in typical fashion, using a powerful, compact swing to deposit a 90 mph Byung-Hyun Kim fastball 445 feet away in the right-center field bleachers. It bounced off a fan’s fingers in the aisle onto a concession roof below and was caught one-handed by Andrew Morbitzer, who was standing in line to buy beer and peanuts.
There was no question how much the hometown fans appreciated Bonds’ accomplishment. The announced sellout crowded of 42,935 erupted in applause as orange, black and silver streamers littered the field and the foghorn blared and fireworks raced into the sky.
“It’s an unbelievable honor,” said Bonds, whose teammates toasted him with champagne in the clubhouse. “It can’t get any better than this.”
The problem for baseball is reconciling how Bonds, the hitter, reached this hallowed intersection. Should he be compared to Babe Ruth? Or Barry Bonds, the original version? Even Bonds is conflicted about his reputation as a slugger.
“With (715), I don’t really have a choice how I view myself, do I?” Bonds said. “I screwed that up.”
What makes Bonds’ assault on the record books so bizarre is that it came with unprecedented fury.
For the first 13 years of his career, Bonds was arguably the game’s best player, the yin to Ken Griffey Jr.’s yang. Bonds blended speed and strength, becoming the first player to reach the 400 mark in both career home runs and steals in 1998.
“I like Griffey, but he was more a media darling, so he got more attention than Barry,” Houston Astros outfielder Preston Wilson said. “Barry was the best player, in my mind.”
However, Bonds never was viewed as a serious challenger to Ruth’s milestone back then, let alone Aaron’s major-league record. Had Bonds remained on the career trajectory he established through the 1998 season, he would have 576 home runs.
That’s Herculean, but not the stuff of a once-in-a-lifetime legend.
In 1999, it has been alleged, he began using performance-enhancing drugs. Bonds told the BALCO grand jury on Dec. 4, 2003, that he had not knowingly used steroids. A likely first-ballot Hall of Famer before the 1999 season – he already had won three National League MVP awards and was an eight-time all-star – Bonds began posting unprecedented power numbers that catapulted him to No. 2 on the career home run list.
“It’s odd, just weird that we have to ask the question of how Barry will be celebrated and thought of,” Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson said. “It’s sad, really.”
As recently as 2000, in a poll by The Sporting News, Bonds was ranked the 29th “Greatest Slugger” in baseball history, one spot ahead of Juan Gonzalez and just behind Albert Belle.
“That’s the era when he played. There were steroids,” said Rickey Henderson, one of the all-time greats, without passing judgment on Bonds.
For fans, particularly those outside of San Francisco, it’s easy to dismiss the era and Bonds’ accomplishment, especially when Major League Baseball refused to celebrate the moment he passed Ruth. But there is no debating Bonds’ numbers as a hitter, a legacy and career divided into two distinct halves.
The wonderful years
Bonds, son of former big-league outfielder Bobby Bonds, entered major-league baseball in 1986 at age 21 with the Pittsburgh Pirates. He weighed 180 pounds, and had the speed to profile as an ideal leadoff hitter. He hit 16 home runs as a rookie with a .330 on-base percentage, and swiped 36 bases.
By 1990, he had blossomed into a superstar, batting .301 with 33 home runs, 115 RBIs and 52 stolen bases. He won the first of a record seven National League MVP awards and gained a reputation for having one of the quickest, most compact swings in baseball.
“He was the complete package. He could hit for power, hit for average and he was a great fielder,” Arizona Diamondbacks first baseman Tony Clark said. “He could beat you in so many ways. I think some people forget how great a player he was.”
In 1992, Bonds and the Pirates endured a paralyzing defeat to the Atlanta Braves in the National League Championship Series. Bonds was blamed after his third consecutive poor playoff performance – he hit .191 (13-for-68) with one home run in the postseason as a Pirate. Hung with the label as a choker and contract negotiations having soured, the slugger returned to his boyhood home, signing with the Giants as a free agent.
The wonder years
For the next six seasons, Bonds was a great all-around player, never hitting fewer than 33 home runs. Then, beginning in 1999, he underwent a startling change, statistically and physically.
According to the book “Game of Shadows,” Bonds remade himself out of envy, irritated by the attention given Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa, whom he considered inferior players. Bonds disputed that notion last month on his soon-to-be shelved reality show.
Regardless, he was no longer wiry strong. He beefed up by approximately 25 pounds and reduced his body fat to 6.2 percent, a startling transformation he credited to weight lifting and an exotic health food diet.
The book alleges in great detail that it marked the moment he began taking performance-enhancing drugs, including steroids. There’s no denying baseball was mesmerized by the home run, thanks to the 1998 storybook seasons of McGwire and Sosa.
Overnight, Bonds bore a striking resemblance to those hulking sluggers.
While Griffey had a head start on surpassing Ruth and Aaron, Bonds proceeded to stage the greatest finishing kick ever. He hit his 500th home run in 2001, his 600th in 2002 and his 700th in 2004. In 2001, at an age when his skills theoretically should have been diminishing, he set a single-season record with 73 home runs – 24 more than he had hit before – to eclipse McGwire’s three-year- old mark of 70.
“I am a Giants fan and a Barry fan. To me, Barry is innocent until proven guilty,” said Samuel Leyva, 28, from San Jose, Calif. “I haven’t seen him shrink like so many other guys who were supposedly doing steroids (before drug testing). If it comes out that he did cheat, then he will suffer the consequences. Until then, I support him.”
Bonds became defined by power – of his 35 home runs of 450-plus feet, 32 have come since 2000 – but never lost his knack for making contact. He won his first batting title in 2002 at age 38, hitting .370.
“There would be times he would strike out and complain (about the call) and we thought he was nuts. Then you would go back on the film and see that he was right,” former teammate Rich Aurilia said. “He had the best eye of anybody I have ever seen.”
Added Rockies reliever Ray King: “If you could put three players in one body, Barry has Tony Gwynn’s eye, Ted Williams’ ability to make hard contact and Hank Aaron’s power. There’s no one else like him.”
Bonds’ bat speed, once terrific, became terrifying. When he connected, the sound of ball hitting wood was unique. St. Louis Cardinals catcher Gary Bennett compared it to a gunshot.
Bonds went from being a Giant in the game to literally becoming a giant in the game.
No statistic better reflects his late career evolution as a slugger: In 1990, his first MVP season, he was walked intentionally 15 times; in 2004, his seventh MVP season, he was walked intentionally 120 times.
With his massive arms and chest, Bonds acknowledged his teammates and blew kisses to the adoring crowd during two curtain calls. With one unforgettable swing, he had passed the Babe. Next stop: immortality.
Or is it infamy?
Staff writer Troy E. Renck can be reached at 303-820-5457 or trenck@denverpost.com.
