BASEBALL ALL-STAR REPORT : Bonds Is Struggling a Bit This Season, but Vows to Reclaim His Place at Top

What a guy, that Barry Bonds.

The San Francisco Giants’ left fielder returned to Pittsburgh for the 65th All-Star game in such a magnanimous mood.

Let these other guys--Ken Griffey Jr., Frank Thomas, for example--dominate 1994, he said.

Barry Bonds will be back to claim his rightful place as baseball’s best in 1995 and ’96 and . . .

“It’s like Michael Bolton at the Grammys,” Bonds said. “Do you want to see him win every year? How much fun would that be?

“I’m just letting these other guys have their year, but I’ll be back next year and the year after that and the year after that. I’m not done yet. Have those other guys won three MVPs? I don’t want to hear about all that other stuff, all their statistics, until they do.

“I’m one of only eight players who have won three. No one can ever take that from me. I’m going for the record. I want to win my fourth. No one has ever done that. I want to be that person.”

Bonds, of course, isn’t just letting those other guys have their year. He’s always part put-on and larger parts ego and arrogance, but he’s also one of baseball’s premier talents. This year, however, a dislocated shoulder and elbow spurs that prevent him from extending consistently on pitches he should drive--evident on two strikeouts Tuesday night--and which will require surgery when the season ends, have inhibited his ability to re-establish his MVP form.

He was elected a National League All-Star starter in a season that would satisfy most players--.280 average, 23 homers and 54 runs batted in--but it’s only a mild echo compared to his .336, 46 and 123 of last year, his first in San Francisco after six with the Pirates.

“Look,” he said. “I’m playing and not making excuses. I’d have to be in the hospital not to play. If I believe I’m better at 80% than my backup, I’m going to play. I love to play and I’m still a threat.”

Injuries, however, have made him less a threat, and the departure of Will Clark from the Giants’ lineup has further handicapped Bonds and the entire San Francisco lineup. The Pacific Sock Exchange of Bonds, Clark and Matt Williams isn’t what it was, and Bonds said:

“You could pitch around two of us, but not all three of us. It all changed without Will. There’s not a lot you can do if they don’t want to pitch to you. Junior (Griffey) and Thomas will find out. They should enjoy their home runs while they can because they’re not going to get the same pitches in the second half or next year.”

In the meantime, Bonds conceded that Griffey and Thomas are rolling up numbers that “make me look as if I’m standing still. I mean, Griffey is the best player I’ve ever seen. Most of us have to work on our strength. But he’s just a naturally strong kid. He’s an awesome, raw talent.”

No question, but it will be awhile, Bonds suggests, before Junior graduates to his three-MVP level.

*

Chili Davis, the Angels’ only All-Star representative, returns to Anaheim today to resume talks through agent Tom Reich on a contract extension. It’s going to be costly for a team often accused of putting payroll ahead of team.

“As much as it’s worked to my benefit, the Angels have to be regretting that they didn’t take care of this situation last winter,” said Davis, who is receiving a base salary of $2.4 million this year and needs 137 more plate appearances to take it to $3.05 million.

Davis said he has filled the two roles the Angels were looking for from him: leadership and productivity.

“If you’re going to be the guy they were counting on in that way, you’d think they’d want to secure you right now,” Davis said. “It didn’t happen when it should have, but I’m hopeful it still will. I grew up in Southern California. I like playing there. We’ve talked to (General Manager Bill Bavasi) and they’re concerned about the strike issue. I understand that, but I’ve got my own future to think about too.”

*

One reason for the players’ opposition to a salary cap is their belief that it will destroy free agency, with several clubs over the cap and out of the market, several others too close to the cap to bid and the rest uninterested.

Said Philadelphia pitcher Danny Jackson, a free agent next winter, “If they have a cap, there’s only about eight teams I can go to. I’d have to go to someplace like Seattle. I want to go somewhere I can win.”

There was more labor rhetoric from interim commissioner Bud Selig and union leader Don Fehr on Tuesday. Both were on the field during batting practice and both will speak to the National Press Club today, with the union set to present its own status quo proposals--”nothing earth shattering,” Fehr said--to owners’ negotiator Richard Ravitch on Thursday.

In another pitch for a salary cap and a change in the compensation system, Selig said it was ironic that this All-Star game was being played in a city whose baseball franchise is “fighting for its life.”

The Pirates, he said, represent a microcosm of baseball’s economic problems, and they won’t go away, he added.

“The one thing this industry has done over the years is suppress the problems, not dealt with them,” Selig said. “For two decades or more, we’ve said we’ll talk about it tomorrow. Tomorrow is here.”

Perhaps, but it remains a mystery as to where the common ground is, where a compromise between the owners’ apparent insistence on a salary cap and the players’ opposition to it, will spring from. If, of course, there is to be a compromise.