Bonds Happy Injury Isn’t Serious

Barry Bonds limped gingerly through the San Francisco Giants’ clubhouse, trying to minimize the pain that had him thinking of sitting out the rest of the season.

Less than 24 hours after being taken from Coors Field on a maintenance cart, Bonds was walking on his own Sunday, thankful that a seemingly debilitating injury turned out to be a sprained joint in his lower back.

“I thought, ‘This year’s gone,’ ” Bonds said. “I didn’t think my career, just the season, I thought it was gone. The pain was so severe in my spine, I was like, ‘Wow!’ It was weird.”

He left Saturday’s game against Colorado in the ninth inning and was scheduled to fly to San Francisco for an MRI and X-rays while the team headed to Atlanta.

Because Bonds was able to make progress overnight, the Giants planned to wait for today’s test results before deciding whether to put him on the 15-day disabled list.

Bonds said he started feeling pain in his back in the early innings of the 10-9 loss to the Rockies. Showing no sign of discomfort, he hit a 457-foot homer into the upper deck in the seventh.

He thought about bunting when he batted in the ninth inning but decided to swing away when he got ahead in the count. He hit a ground ball and fell along the first base line.

“I couldn’t move my legs or nothing,” he said. “Pain was shooting right up my back and into my neck. I thought maybe I slipped a disk or something. They [the trainers] didn’t want me to get up. I’m like, ‘No way. I’ve got to walk off this field on my own. If it’s over, I at least want to walk off this field on my own.’ ”

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The Florida Marlins put third baseman Mike Lowell, who has a strained left thumb, on the 15-day disabled list and recalled infielder Chris Clapinski from triple-A Calgary of the Pacific Coast League.