Giants Can’t Catch Break With Fans

What’s been a difficult start in their new park grew more frustrating for the San Francisco Giants on Saturday, as a young Giant fan helped the Arizona Diamondbacks to a victory.

A fan in the left field seats wearing a Barry Bonds uniform grabbed a ball off the bat of Kelly Stinnett just as Bonds was about to attempt a leaping catch, giving Stinnett his second home run and giving the Diamondbacks a 7-4 victory at Pacific Bell Park.

One of the features of the new stadium, where the Giants are 0-5, is the closeness of the fans to the field of play in the outfield.

With two on and the Diamondbacks up, 2-1, with two outs in the fourth, Stinnett lofted a high drive to deep left off starter Russ Ortiz. The ball clearly was over the fence, and Bonds timed his jump to try to rob Stinnett of a home run.

As he was about to make the catch, the boy’s glove reached on top of Bonds and caught the ball.

Realizing what he had done, the boy quickly let go and the ball trickled back into Bonds’ glove, but it was too late.

“Once a year you’re going to go through something like this, but you never expect that it will happen this early in the season,” said Giant Manager Dusty Baker, whose team has lost seven in a row. “This is not pleasant for anybody. It’s not pleasant to play and it’s not pleasant to watch.”

Bonds did hit his fifth home run of the season, and 450th of his career.

Pittsburgh 2, New York 0--Rookie Jimmy Anderson gave up five hits in eight innings and Kevin Young provided the offense with a two-run home run in the seventh as the Pirates defeated the Mets at Pittsburgh. Met starter Glendon Rusch did pitch a complete game in his first appearance of the year.

Milwaukee 6, Atlanta 3--Geoff Jenkins’ home run capped a three-run eighth as the Brewers won at Milwaukee. Brewer starter Jimmy Haynes gave up an unearned run and three hits through seven innings. David Weathers got the victory in relief. Bob Wickman pitched a perfect ninth for his third save.

Chicago 4, Florida 2--Rookie Scott Downs gave up four hits in seven innings for his first major league victory as the Cubs took advantage of two Florida errors in the first inning to win at Chicago.

San Diego 5, Houston 3--Al Martin hit a two-run home run and Woody Williams pitched a strong 7 1/3 innings and drove in a run to lead the Padres past Jose Lima and the Astros at San Diego. Williams, gave up two runs on five hits and had a run-scoring double in the sixth. Lima, a 21-game winner last season, gave up five runs on nine hits in seven innings.

Montreal at Philadelphia, ppd., rain--The game between the Phillies and Expos was postponed after a delay of one hour and 50 minutes and no makeup date and time has been determined.

St. Louis at Colorado, ppd., snow--The game between the Cardinals and Rockies was postponed because of snow. The game will be made up today as part of a split doubleheader.