Sit Back, Enjoy Bonds’ Show

Only baseball could take something as exciting as a man whacking home runs at a record rate and turn it into a hand-wringing ordeal.

Barry Bonds is crushing the ball. But he’s aloof. And everybody’s hitting homers these days. So the great debate isn’t about whether he can pass the magic 70 mark, it’s whether or not we’re supposed to be excited about the chase.

Give me a break. This sounds like one of those letters to Dear Abby wondering if they should invite ornery Aunt Edna to the wedding. It’s unnecessary worrying about a non-issue.

Bat meets ball, it’s gone. Enjoy the ride.

Bonds has hit more home runs sooner in a season than anyone in major league history. When Mark McGwire was doing this three years ago we were told this was a good thing, even though he hated the media attention about his pursuit of Maris’ 61 and complained that he felt like a “caged animal.”

Then Sammy Sosa joined the party. He added a healthy dose of competition and some much-needed smiles, McGwire lightened up and the Great Home Run Race became the sports story of the year.

By the next season, when McGwire and Sosa each topped 61 again, people were complaining. And now there’s talk that McGwire’s 1998 accomplishment of 70 homers has not been around long enough to be valuable.

Please. It’s a home run record, not a wine.

We’re watching one of the best players of his generation hit the ball better than he has at any point in a career that will bring him to Cooperstown one day. He should break 40 before the all-star break.

But a lot of baseball writers don’t like him. Some of them haven’t even met him, but they’ve read other writers who don’t like him, so they’ve formed their opinion that Bonds generally isn’t that fun to be around.

And it seems as if there is a detractor for every home run he hits.

But he plays at Pac Bell Park, with frequent visits to Coors Field and Bank One Ballpark.

This is payback for spending seven years at Candlestick Park, which wasn’t exactly a hitter’s paradise. Bonds still hit 46 homers his first year there, and had 37 homers through 112 games in the strike-shortened 1994 season.

The pitching’s diluted, the ball is juiced, global warming. . . .

You could make the same charges in ‘98, and it didn’t ruin the story then.

So it gets back to image, which is often the greatest myth in the sports world. For every camera-ready superstar, someone, somewhere can dish some dirt on them.

But all it takes is a couple of slick Nike commercials for an athlete to develop a “personality”, no matter what he’s like in real life.

That’s the quick approach. Otherwise, it’s simply a matter of time.

If any player hangs around long enough he can be loved.

Remember booing Pete Rose at Dodger Stadium in the 1970s? He had that cocky attitude, he could recite every one of his stats, he once broke catcher Ray Fosse’s collarbone by bowling him over in an All-Star game.

By the time Rose closed in on Ty Cobb’s hit record in 1985 he was a good guy, a magazine cover boy. But a few years later it turned out he bet on baseball and he was bad again . . . until Jim Gray kept badgering him about it during a TV interview and everyone felt sorry for Rose.

That is, before he brazenly tried to parlay that sympathy into another bid for inclusion to the Hall of Fame.

So images--like home run records, apparently--aren’t everlasting.

We saw it in the tennis world, where Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe went from spoiled brats to gallant old men in the twilight of their careers.

We like players who fight off time, and we like to see people rebound.

We’re sold on Jennifer Capriati’s plucky comeback story--and she’s only 25.

Bonds will be 37 next month. That in itself makes his run at the record remarkable.

But it’s also a reminder that he won’t be playing at this level much longer.

His quick hands and tremendous bat speed elicited this remark from teammate Calvin Murray: “That’s why he’s him--and we’re us.”

We may never like “him.” Most won’t get a chance for themselves to judge him, unfiltered through the media. But should we root against him?

After a year that already has brought us a Super Bowl MVP who figured in a murder case and an NBA MVP who recorded offensive rap lyrics, rooting for Bonds shouldn’t be so difficult.

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J.A. Adande can be reached at j.a.adande@latimes.com

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