Twenty-one years ago, at Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, a skinny, cocky leadoff hitter from Arizona State, a second generation major-leaguer who had grown up at the knees of the legendary Willie Mays, connected on a pitch from Craig McMurtry.
It was the first big-league home run for Barry Bonds, and there was nothing tainted about the celebration when he crossed home plate, a 21-year-old man with a future that sparkled like the diamond in his ear.
On a chilly Tuesday night, before a sellout crowd at AT&T Park, a very different looking Bonds, this one rippling with muscle and upper body mass, became the most prolific home run hitter of all time. He rifled a 3-2 fastball in the fifth inning from Washington Nationals left-hander Mike Bacsik into the center field bleachers for the 756th home run of his career, breaking the record Hank Aaron had claimed from Babe Ruth in 1974.
Giants fans stood and cheered for almost 10 minutes as Bonds first was congratulated by his teammates, then his family and his godfather, Mays, all of whom came on the field between home plate and the dugout.
An unexpected touch was added when the Giants played a message from Aaron to Bonds on the center field scoreboard. Bonds, standing near the third-base line, had tears coming down his face as he listened to Aaron.
When Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s record, he was trailed around the bases by two floppy haired men, who seemed as jubilant as he was. During this celebration, a fan jumped the fence in left field and ran toward the infield but was tackled by members of the large security force and led off.
While there was joy in the celebration that followed, it was a long way from the pure excitement that followed that first one. The widely held belief that Bonds transformed his body with steroids and other illegal performance-enhancing substances, yielding to temptation in baseball’s testing-free era after the beefed up Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were placed on pedestals for their record-setting home run hitting in 1998, causes the achievement to largely ring hollow.
“We know all the issues,” Larry Baer, the Giants chief operating officer, said Monday. “We know there’s no way the issues are going to be solved as he approaches 756. You deal with this with the information as you know it.”
Aaron, who has not embraced Bonds, had been conspicuously silent during Bonds’ climb to 756. Commissioner Bud Selig, who has spent parts of the last four seasons monitoring the federal government’s investigation into Bonds’ alleged steroids dealer and imprisoned personal trainer, had seen 11 of Bonds’ recent games but was represented by Hall of Famer Frank Robinson and Jimmie Lee Solomon on Tuesday.
According to the Associated Press, Selig will be meeting with George Mitchell’s committee investigating steroid use in baseball this week. It’s likely that Bonds name will be mentioned a few times in those talks.
Selig gave little reaction after Bonds hit 755 on Saturday night, watching with his hands in his pockets.
Because of his bulk and a late-career increase in power, Bonds’ 73-homer season in 2001 raised suspicions. But it was after federal agents raided the Bay Area Laboratories Co-Operative facility outside San Francisco in September 2003, that Bonds was linked directly to steroids.
The raid on BALCO, which produced convictions for the company’s founder, Victor Conte and three others, turned up evidence showing a pattern of use by track stars Tim Montgomery and Marion Jones, Bill Romanowski and some teammates with the Oakland Raiders and some of baseball’s prominent sluggers such as Bonds, Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield.
Bonds, who earlier this season was voted onto the National League All-Star team by fans, has his share of supporters, especially in San Francisco. It is his hometown and he has played for the Giants since 1993. Bonds has been booed elsewhere but blames the media for distorting his image.
“I think people like me,” Bonds said after being voted onto the All-Star team. “I don’t think people dislike me. I really don’t think people dislike me.”
During a visit to Wrigley Field on July 16, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said he believes the media and public have convicted Bonds falsely.
“He has been condemned without trial,” Jackson said. “He’s guilty until proven innocent, based upon something subjective and subjunctive: ‘if.’ … I just hope people will accept this moment for what it is when it comes, that Barry is one of the most phenomenal hitters the game has ever known.”
Former NBA star Charles Barkley echoed Jackson’s sentiments.
“This to me has been one of the worst things I’ve ever seen in sports, how one guy can get so victimized, everybody in the world has turned on him, says bad things,” Barkley recently told Fox TV. “First of all, a lot of guys were using that stuff. But they don’t get the same treatment Barry gets.”
Bonds is not among the major leaguers who have been suspended for positive tests for steroids and other synthetic drugs designed to increase strength and allow the body to recover quickly from workouts. But he told a grand jury in 2003 that he took “the clear” and “the cream,” saying he thought they were liniment and flaxseed oil, not steroids. His trainer, Greg Anderson, who introduced him to Conte, has allowed himself to be jailed rather than provide testimony about Bonds.
Using leaked grand jury testimony, San Francisco Chronicle reporters Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams published a series of authoritative stories and a subsequent book, “Game of Shadows,” that details Bonds’ use of Winstrol, Deca-Durabolin and other banned performance-enhancing drugs.
Bonds has long been the target of federal prosecutors on matters of perjury, tax evasion and obstruction of justice. The New York Daily News recently reported that the prosecutors are ready to move toward indictments, possibly as soon as September.
Aaron, who played 23 years, broke Ruth’s record without ever hitting more than 47 homers in a season. Bonds, a highly gifted player with power and speed in his early years with the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Giants, has won seven National League Most Valuable Player Awards, including three when his frame was still lean. He has hit as many as 50 homers in a season only once.
He blasted 73 in 2001, breaking the single-season record that Mark McGwire had set only three years earlier. In “Game of Shadows,” Fainaru-Wada and Williams write that Bonds committed himself to an aggressive course of steroid use after becoming jealous of the adulation McGwire and Sosa received during the 1998 home run race.
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