Soaring Bonds : Veteran Is Enjoying His New Team and Has Tales to Tell About Each Player

Barry Bonds settles into his seat on the San Francisco Giants’ charter jet and yanks out the white bag from the seat pocket in front of him.

Ptooey! He spits a little brown juice into the bag, smiles and points to the pinch of tobacco tucked into his lower lip.

“I started chewing at 14,” he says almost apologetically. “I quit off and on. I quit this whole winter, then started again since New Year’s. It’s a bad habit. If I could quit I would.”

A pause. Ptooey!

“It’s just part of my comfort zone, something I’m accustomed to. I’m starting to chew more sunflower seeds, stuffing big wads of them in my mouth. I’m not allowed to chew tobacco at home. My wife doesn’t allow it.”

So there it is, perhaps his worst vice. No illegal drugs, no gambling, no 130 m.p.h. speeding tickets, no barroom brawls. Just chewing tobacco and an unwillingness to acquiesce to everyone’s demands that has given him a reputation, fairly or not, for having an aloof and arrogant attitude.

Aboard the jet and the bus to the hotel, Bonds is laughing, telling stories, utterly affable--his big brown eyes as lively as his banana yellow shirt, his smile as bright as the gold and diamonds adorning his fingers, neck and left ear.

There isn’t a trace of the reclusive, self-absorbed figure he often is before games, or the weary, detached figure seeking silent refuge afterward.

“People don’t realize how much concentration it takes to play this game right, to think about every pitch, every situation for three hours. My mind’s going tick, tick, tick the whole time.

“I’m a computer, man. I’m a computer for the whole team. And when work time’s over, I’m just mentally drained.”

He has it in his mind that he just might be able to keep up his batting average, floating now around .400, be the first to finish a season that high since Ted Williams’ .406 in 1941.

“I believe I can do it,” says Bonds, his performance from the moment he joined the Giants justifying baseball’s richest contract, $43.75 million over six years. “I’m going to give it a shot. I know there’s going to be times when I’m going to cut down. I might hit .390, .380. And there’s going to be times when I’m going to get very, very hot again. Hopefully, I’ll get hot at the right time, and I won’t get cold enough where I drop back down to .300.”

He giggles at that last thought, a concession that slumps inevitably, often inexplicably, follow hitting streaks.

“Sometimes I don’t think it’s possible. I don’t understand how Williams did it to begin with. It’s hard, really hard. Everything’s got to fall into place. But I’ve got a chance to do anything. It might seem impossible, but nothing is impossible.”

A triple crown isn’t impossible, either, maybe even an 11-pointed crown, with his numbers floating all over the chart of National League leaders one-third of the way through the season: batting average, home runs, RBIs, runs, hits, doubles, triples, slugging percentage, on-base percentage, walks, total bases.

Nor is a third MVP or a fourth straight Gold Glove farfetched, with a season’s worth of diving, leaping, highlight-film catches in left field already.

But most of all, he believes that he and Matt Williams and Will Clark and Robby Thompson and the rest of the resurgent Giants aren’t about to swoon this June or fade from first, but rather have a good chance of reaching the World Series he just missed twice in Pittsburgh.

Bonds is enjoying his new team and has tales to tell about each player. Some may even be true.

Like the ones about young center fielder Darren Lewis, who watches Bonds for signals on how to position for every hitter. Bonds’ vision is so good--”A lot better than 20-20,” he says--he can see the catcher’s signs from left field so he knows what kind of pitch is coming.

“D Lewis works his butt off. He listens to everything I tell him, and my dad and Willie (Mays) tell him,” Bonds says. “But he’s easy to fool. One day, I told him we put some gin in the coffee and he says, ‘Yeah, it tastes like gin,’ and he starts acting dizzy. There wasn’t any gin in that. And he likes ginseng tea, so we told him we put some caffeine in it, and he starts bouncing around and goes 2-for-4 that day. He says, ‘Yeah, that’s great. I’ve gotta have that every day.’ I said, ‘D, that wasn’t caffeine. That was you.”’

Bonds keeps mental files on every ballplayer. He studies all the hitters and memorizes their tendencies so he knows how to play them, all the pitchers so he knows how to hit them, all his teammates so he knows what they’re likely to do at the plate and in the field in different situations.

“It just amazes me how many things during the course of one game he does to help us win,” pitcher Bud Black says. “Just the subtlest of things a fan might not even notice. It might be something in the dugout that Barry notices that somebody’s doing or something he says about a certain pitcher or even about our pitchers. He comes in sometimes and gives us tips. He brings a lot to the ballpark besides great play.”

Ballplayer, prankster, showman, Bonds has bit parts in two upcoming movies and he’s been on “The Arsenio Hall Show” a couple of times, getting enough of a taste of Hollywood to want more.

“Playing baseball, pursuing my acting career, those are things I feel dedicated to, that I’m going to give 100% into. Anything that you do in life, you’re a student of that. In our profession you want to make it to the Hall of Fame. If I don’t ever make it to the Hall of Fame, at least I know that I got an ‘A’ in my class for whatever time that I was there and I did the best I can and I can walk away from it happy with myself.

“I’m at my peak right now, and maybe I can play another four years at this pace. To hit, run, steal, you can’t do that forever. I can cut down on my stolen bases. But, see, when I feel like I can’t do it all, then I don’t want to do it at all. If I can’t run and I can’t hit for power and average, then I don’t want to play no more. Or I’ve got to work harder to do it. One of the two.”

Bonds, at 28, clearly is happy with himself right now even if he’s never fully satisfied with his own performance. Only a few other free agents--Reggie Jackson with the Yankees, Dave Winfield with Toronto, Jack Morris with Minnesota and then Toronto--have made such an impact on their new teams.

Nike, which helped transform Michael Jordan into a bigger-than-life megastar, is poised to try the same with Bonds. His image soon will loom like a real giant on a building in San Francisco.

Yet Bonds isn’t quite sure he wants that much fame.

“Michael Jordan is trying to get his life back,” he says softly, as if he’s thought about this a while. “It’s been taken away from him for so many years. I don’t know. I’ve never been a Michael Jordan-type person.

“I’ve had long talks with Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson and other great athletes. They always say, ‘Barry, now that you’ve put yourself on a different level, everybody expects you not to have fun. You’re not supposed to enjoy the success that you’re having. Everybody expects you to be a humble person.’

“For instance, let’s say one of my players came in and hit a big home run and was all happy and going, ‘Yeah, dude.’ But if I came in and did it, it’s like, ‘Oh, there he goes talking about himself.’ The public enjoys it, but sometimes it’s a threat to your own players. So you’re supposed to hit a big home run and not say nothing. And then root for everybody else stronger than you can root for yourself at times.”

Bonds’ ambivalence about his off-the-field duties is evident in the way he reacts to requests for his time, one day shutting everyone out, another day accommodating all requests. He is the same person shouting in anger in the locker room hours before a game about an unflattering story, godfather Willie Mays quietly supportive by his side, and then a couple of days later earnestly giving a clinic at Candlestick Park for 10,000 Little Leaguers.

Asked to judge himself among characteristics on a personality poll, he checks off honest, trustworthy and charitable, not mentioning the $60,000 he donated to the Adopt a Special Kid foundation or the support he’s given other groups.

Smart?

“It depends what day it is,” he says with a smile.

Selfish or greedy?

“It depends what day it is.”

Cocky or big ego?

“Cocky, no. Ego, yeah. You’ve got to have ego.”

Arrogant or obnoxious?

“Oh, only to my close friends,” he says laughing, “and they don’t take it to heart.”

He acknowledges that he’s moody but believes he is misunderstood by the public because his personality is “filtered through other people.”

“So for me to worry about it is really irrelevant,” he says. “I don’t care what the public perceives me as because it’s not me giving it to the public.”

And is he bothered by his former teammates in Pittsburgh and other teams, who do know him and have been ticked off by him at times?

“To an extent. They like you or they don’t like you. But what it comes down to is, ‘Do they respect you?’ That’s the main thing. You’re not there for everybody to like you. You try to do your best, but everybody has his own different personality and his own way to do things.

“I might isolate myself away from the other players to do the things that I’m doing on the field. ‘Oh, you’re on your own program,’ that’s what they say. That’s the big thing: ‘Barry’s on his program.’ That’s not my own program. That’s the program that I’m trying to do to keep my success level up, which will improve everybody else’s success level. If I do well, that means you’re going to do well. If I get on base, steal second, then I’m putting myself in a position to help you out. I’m not thinking about myself.”

As much as he claims to ignore criticism, he obviously is not immune to it, as he showed with his profanity-filled outburst in the locker room a couple of weeks ago over a magazine story.

“I get stung by it when all I try to do is perform my job to the best of my capabilities, and when I’m performing it I’m getting back criticism,” he says. “I’m getting paid to perform my job. What am I doing wrong in my performance that they’re not happy about?”

His bosses, Giants president Peter Magowan and manager Dusty Baker, have no complaints.

“Was he a bargain?” Magowan says, considering the question. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody play the game of baseball better than this guy has played it for the first two months of this year. I used to say the best player I ever saw was Willie Mays and I never expected to see anybody play better than Willie. But I don’t think Willie ever played at this level for as long as this.”

Says Baker: “The thing I like about Barry more than anything is that he enjoys playing. Besides the money and all, he just loves to play. The only thing I see he doesn’t like is to lose. Those two things there, mixed with the combination of talent and intelligence, make a great ballplayer.”

Bonds has kind memories of Pittsburgh manager Jim Leyland, calling their much-publicized squabble in spring training in 1991 “a misunderstanding” that is best forgotten. But that scene, precipitated by Bonds’ petulance over losing a salary arbitration case and his decision to snub the press, was captured on videotape with Leyland yelling, “I’ve kissed your butt for three years! If you don’t want to be here, then get your butt off the field!” Shown endlessly on television, that moment still defines Bonds’ arrogant image.

Leyland and Bonds put that behind them, even if the media and public didn’t, and grew closer in two division championship seasons. When Bonds got off to a horrible start in the playoffs last season, he unburdened himself to Leyland in a closed-door session that sparked a resurgence in the final games.

“I knew it was my last year in Pittsburgh,” Bonds says, “and I’d never let my team down all season, and I was wondering, ‘How can you be there for 162 games and then disappear like a ghost in seven games?’ I just wanted to talk to a friend.

“Jim Leyland has always been my friend. He was the only one who ever understood me. He’s the only one who knew my work habits, and knew exactly how hard I worked and what I did, and the initial pressures that I go through with everybody else. And how no matter what I did I’m never going to be satisfying anybody, I’ll always have to be more. He always knew that I wanted to do more to satisfy them, and why I wasn’t at that time.”

Fans talk about the money Bonds makes, but all he seems to care about is the game and his family, getting up early at home to watch cartoons with his 2-year-old and 3-year-old kids and shopping for them when he’s on the road.

“I didn’t come into this game for the money. My dad always told me, ‘If you’re good enough in the game, you’ll make the money. So just play the game and love the game first.’

“I’m more than thankful for what the Giants’ organization has done for me. And now there’s nothing in my heart more than wanting to perform for them because of what they’ve given me.

“Heck, man, if I made $4 million like I was at Pittsburgh, that was more money than I ever thought I was going to make anyway.

“When I came up Ozzie Smith was the first to hit that $2 million mark. I said, if I made $800,000 a year, maybe $1 million, oh, I could live on that forever. Man,” he adds with a giggle, “a million dollars became nothing.”