New York Weighs Heavy on Bonilla : Baseball: Idea of returning home is an intriguing possibility for Pittsburgh slugger.

You shouldn’t say this is none of Bobby Bonilla’s business. In his heart, Bonilla wishes Patrick Ewing would turn his eyes from the marketplace and stay with the New York Knickerbockers.

You have to recognize that professionally Bonilla is merely one of the very best baseball players and he is really a Knickerbocker fan. Has been since he was a little kid.

You have to understand that Bonilla is a New Yorker even if he works in Pittsburgh and has a home in Bradenton, Fla. He has this image of New York magic that overrides his scorn for potholes and burned-out buildings. It pulls him to drive through the old neighborhood when he comes to play the Mets.

The magnetism, he acknowledges, pulls him toward the Yankees and the Mets. It also makes him think about Ewing’s failed attempt to become a free agent and leave. There is this curious parallel of conflicts.

“I’d love to see Patrick stay inNew York,” Bonilla said. “Bobby Bo doesn’t want him to go; he’s a vital part of that team.

“Of course, I’m giving you a fan’s perspective. I’ve been a Knick fan since I was about 9. But what I do in baseball is in the context of the business of sports in general.”

He assumes that if Ewing had grown up in Pittsburgh, gone to Duquesne or Pitt, he’d be saying Bonilla should stay with the Bucs, rather than go for the bucks. That’s what Bonilla hears the fans saying to him. And he does have this sense of the game that made him love the TV production “When It Was a Game” and the mythology that players were all good guys and everything was fun even though they were being rooked.

It is nostalgic to look back on players staying their whole careers with one team and good teams staying together. The thought that players stayed because they wanted to stay is a mixed fiction. At this time, if Bonilla is free to leave and does want to leave, it would be a colossal mistake for a New York team not to get him -- Yankees or Mets.

There are these conflicts inside him. Sometimes he wants to stay. “I realize I’m a part of something terrific here (in Pittsburgh),” he said. But then there are people out there who are making more money than the Pirates are offering him, which he says is below his market value. And there is the thought that if the Pirates say they can’t afford him, surely the Mets and Yankees can.

Before he was an All-Star right fielder, he was an All-Star third baseman. He is willing to play either or both, which is a key aspect of why the Pirates are in first place.

Bonilla’s agent has declared that Bonilla is gone at the end of the season, and negotiations are closed. Except that negotiations never are closed. Pittsburgh Manager Jim Leyland says he feels Bonilla is gone. He also thinks Bonilla is thoroughly “confused.”

What’s remarkable is that he’s been able to do so well -- to go into Tuesday night’s game with a .298 average, 13 home runs and 65 RBI. “To me,” observed pitching coach Ray Miller, “it’s like telling your wife, ‘We’re going to pack the kids and go off and have a terrific vacation together, and then we’re going to get a divorce.’ Unfortunately, the game has reached that point.”

It’s a confusion of riches, to say the least. By his count, the Pirates have offered four years for $16.8 million which would make him the fifth-highest paid player at age 28 and still rising. Bonilla sought advice from Leyland and was told, “Bobby, I want you to have peace of mind,” which is Leyland’s way.

“It was not, ‘Please stay,”’ Leyland said. “Can I ask them to give him $20 million?” The Knicks offered Ewing, over the course of negotiations, the highest annual salary ever for a team player. Surely, if the Pirates offered to make Bonilla the highest-paid, he would have jumped at it.

Bonilla did not say he was insulted. He knows how much money that is. He grew up at 149th Street and Jackson Avenue in the South Bronx. “As ghetto as it gets,” he said. The building he grew up in has burned down. “If I wasn’t a ball player, I could easily be selling Haagen-Dazs at 50th and Park.”

The money is so much, he said, “I even have trouble spitting out the words.” He stammered the numbers. While the rest of the Pirates were proclaiming, with some justification, that they were taking the Mets series as just three more games in a long season, Bonilla was chirping eagerly about playing in New York, in front of his family. There were 55 of his tickets at Shea Stadium Tuesday night.

He likes to think that he could thrive in this hometown in spite of the conflicts that come with it. Julius Erving said he thought it might have helped his career to have left home when he did; Lee Mazzilli was heavily burdened by coming home.

Bonilla cites Willie Randolph as his example -- even as a role model. Bonilla drives up to the old neighborhood, not for nostalgia but for perspective. “So that my head doesn’t get too big,” he said. “I always do it. It’s a humbling experience. You can get carried away after you’ve done this a few years.”

Media demands have not been his problem. “I could play here five years and not one of you would (irk) me,” he said. He even understands the difference between reporters and columnists.

He recalls the sound of Reggie Jackson. He was booed, Bonilla said, but “when the game was on the line, you didn’t hear anybody chanting, ‘Nettles!’ There was something about Reggie.”

Bonilla plays hard. “Not one person will ever boo you if you bust your butt and get your uniform dirty,” he said.

He thinks about that and of playing for his family and friends. His parents are divorced, his father living near Shea and his mother near Yankee Stadium. They were there Tuesday night.

He says they were always there for him. His mother became a psychologist when Bonilla was 18 years old. His father is an electrician. “I remember he was always a good provider,” Bonilla said.

The pull is both ways. “If the market value is here, I’d stay,” he said. “I have a home in Pittsburgh, friends. I could stay. I follow my heart. I always do.”

That means he really doesn’t know.