Bonds Stays With Giants

Barry Bonds limited his options to one team Wednesday, binding himself to return to the San Francisco Giants by accepting the team’s offer of salary arbitration.

After one of the most spectacular seasons in baseball history, one that included hitting a record 73 home runs, Bonds failed to spark a bidding war in free agency.

No team except the Giants acknowledged offering him a contract.

Bonds still could negotiate a long-term contract with the Giants, who bid a reported $72 million over four years. Both Scott Boras, the agent for Bonds, and Ned Colletti, the Giants’ assistant general manager, said the sides would continue to pursue a long-term deal.

“I’m glad he accepted and he’ll be back here for at least one more year,” Colletti said. “He’s said all along he wants to finish his career here, and this gives him the opportunity to do so.”

If he proceeds to salary arbitration, in which one-year contracts are awarded, Bonds would shatter the arbitration record of $8.2 million, set this year by Andruw Jones of the Atlanta Braves. Bonds made $10.3 million last season, a salary he could double in arbitration.

“I think Barry had the best season of modern times,” Boras told ESPN Wednesday. “His value to the franchise, both as an icon player and performer, really put them in a very different place.”

If an arbitrator awards Bonds a salary the Giants consider excessive, Colletti said the team would not release him--arbitration awards are not guaranteed--nor trade him.

But, without a long-term contract that would allow the team to pay Bonds more in later years, a high salary awarded in arbitration--say, $20 to $25 million--could force the Giants to trade other players to remain within their budget.

While Boras may paint the Giants’ Pacific Bell Park as the house that Bonds built, every team could use a slugger with Bonds’ resume. He won his fourth most valuable player award this year, after a season in which he broke Mark McGwire’s single-season home run record and Babe Ruth’s single-season records for walks and slugging percentage.

The Giants increased their initial offer last week, Colletti said, and Boras told Colletti that another club had offered a five-year deal. Still, no team bit on a reported asking price of $100 million over five years.

Owners might call that fiscal responsibility, but the Dodgers’ Gary Sheffield used a different word.

“Believe it or not, there’s collusion going on. That’s what I see,” Sheffield told Fox television Wednesday, several hours before Bonds accepted the Giants’ offer. “You’ve got the home run champion out there and he doesn’t have a team yet and he wasn’t the first priority, that says something about this game.”

To Sheffield, that says Bonds is a valuable pawn in an increasingly ugly and protracted battle between owners and players over a new labor agreement.

And so, too, could be second baseman Bret Boone, who accepted arbitration from the Seattle Mariners Wednesday after a season in which he hit a career-high 37 homers and led the American League with 141 runs batted in.

Wednesday marked the deadline for players to accept or reject arbitration offers.

If a player rejects an arbitration offer from his current team, he can continue to negotiate with the team only through Jan. 8.

Commissioner Bud Selig testified before Congress that 25 of 30 teams lost money last season--a combined $232 million in operating losses--and demanded the players’ union approve a reformed economic system that would include increased revenue sharing among owners and salary restraints on players.

The New York Yankees, with revenue dwarfing that of just about every other team, committed $120 million over seven years to Jason Giambi. But no other free agent has signed for more than four years, or more than $27 million.

Bonds, 37, is seven years older than Giambi, the American League MVP last season and runner-up this season. While Bonds chooses to remain aloof from teammates, fans and the media, Giambi embraces the leadership roles in the clubhouse and community and before the media.

Said Sheffield: “I told Barry this too--if you were Giambi and you had his personality and all the other things that he had, you would be a Yankee. Right now he suffers from all those things.”

Boras, while saying that “any team in baseball wants somebody who hit 73 home runs,” declined to specify other teams that had inquired about Bonds.