Unsociable Giant breaks US all-time home-run record
Rob Steen
Being the son of a celebrated father has been a burden for many in sport, where memories are elephantine, the past aspic-coated. Think Richard Hutton, Gary Nicklaus, John Bradman. Yet Barry Bonds has overcome this disadvantage so serenely that recollections of his father, the record-breaking San Francisco Giant Bobby Bonds, are being obliterated with the same finality that he crashes balls to distant parts.
The postponement of a week’s baseball after the World Trade Centre tragedy may have disrupted concentration for many, but not the jowly, shaven-headed Bonds. The 37-year-old Giants outfielder has picked up where he left off.
Against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Sunday, Bonds, whose father was the first to hit 30 home runs and steal 30 bases in the same season, powered his 73rd home run of the current campaign. Baseball’s premier force of the 1990s had equalled Mark McGwire’s record of 70, set in 1998, against the Houston Astros on Friday.
One source of oomph is Bonds’s bat, a red-handled, black-barrelled 75cm maple weapon known as the Rideau Crusher, crafted by a Canadian carpenter, Sam Holman. Other explanations, though, run deeper. Forget touchdowns, slapshots and slam-dunks: the home run is America’s sexiest, most masculine sporting feat. Which is why, when a host of ballparks were being built over the past decade, outfield fences were erected closer to the plate than was the norm. After the players’ strike of 1994-1995, punters needed to be wooed anew.
Throw in four new franchises and the consequent dilution of pitching expertise, and the upshot has been an epidemic of boundary-clearing biffs. In 1992, 10 men hammered more than 30 homers, Juan Gonzalez leading with 43; to date, more than three times that number have exceeded 30 this season, eight of whom have already outstripped Gonzalez.
For some, home run landmarks represent poisoned chalices. Take Roger Maris, the shy New York Yankees slugger who in 1961 had the audacity to supercede Babe Ruth’s single-season record of 60 ”dingers”. He shed most of his hair amid the stress, then had his entry in the record books diminished by an asterisk (he had 162 games to Ruth’s 154) a reminder of how dimly the game regards such interlopers. ”I was drained of all my desire to play baseball,” he later confessed.
Then there was Hank Aaron, who in 1974 not only had the gall to topple The Babe’s career tally of 714 but was also black. ”I don’t want them to forget Ruth,” he protested as the racist letters flooded in. ”I just want them to remember me.”
There seems scant likelihood of Bonds being forgotten, but perhaps for the wrong reasons. A man apart, come winter he will be a free agent; his departure from the Bay area would not be universally mourned. After one victory last month most team-mates stayed to celebrate; not Bonds.
”That’s Barry,” said Jeff Kent, the second baseman who pipped Bonds for last season’s National League Most Valuable Player award. ”He doesn’t answer questions. He palms everybody off on us, so we have to do his talking for him.
”Barry does a lot of questionable things. Sometimes it rubs the younger guys the wrong way and sometimes it rubs the veterans the wrong way. I was raised to be a team guy, and I am, but Barry’s Barry. It took me two years to learn to live with it, but I learned.”
Another side to Bonds’s character was shown in the aftermath of the September 11 tragedy when he promised to donate $10000 for every home run to the United Way national system of volunteers to help the victims’ families. But for the past two springs he has refused to show up for the club photocall. While the other 24 on the Giants’ roster stretch together before a game, he warms up with a personal trainer. While team-mates play cards, he stays in the clubhouse, surrounded by nutritionist, masseur, trainers, three lockers, a massage chair and widescreen TV. While colleagues take one bus to the ballpark, he boards another ferrying the broadcasters, coaches and Dusty Baker, a highly respected manager but, some say, overly indulgent.
Yet who can say Baker is wrong to coddle? If the Giants reach the play-offs, all that self-centredness will be forgiven.
”Bonds lacks the cartoon muscularity of McGwire, a Bunyanesque figure who seemed to spring full-blown out of our collective American imagination,” Sports Illustrated’s Jack McCallum has observed. ”He seems distant and self-absorbed, joyless and put upon.” Much the same has been said of Alan Shearer, Colin Montgomerie and Michael Atherton, but that’s sport. Being unable to convey pleasure need not mean being incapable of giving it.