Giants’ Bonds Sends Balls, Stock Soaring

Each crack of Barry Bonds’ explosive bat is accompanied by the ka-ching of a cash register. Each home run--and he has 25--is a painful reminder of the risk that the San Francisco Giants took in spring training when they rejected his bid for a contract extension in favor of waiting until the season is over, when Bonds becomes eligible for free agency.

“We know we run a risk at the end of the year to be subject to the market or the price going up, but that’s the way of the world,” General Manager Brian Sabean said in March.

Well, the price is going only one way as Bonds, as agent Scott Boras puts it, continues to “step into the Hank Aaron career footprints in that he’s having some of his best years after the age of 35. People want to talk about his age [36] instead of his performance. He hit [a career-high] 49 homers last year. As a performer, he knows how to draw on his skills better than he ever has.”

Aaron hit 245 of his 755 homers after turning 35. As Bonds’ new agent, Boras said he recommended to his client that he wait until the season was over before approaching the Giants, that his best economic leverage would come as a free agent, but Bonds wanted to get something done in the spring so that his family would have the future settled.

“I told the Giants that Barry wanted to get it out of the way and that it would take a [Jeff] Bagwell or [Carlos] Delgado-type deal,” Boras said. “I think the Giants’ baseball people would have liked to do it, but the decision was out of their hands.”

Delgado has a four-year, $68-million contract with the Toronto Blue Jays, and Bagwell has a five-year, $85-million contract with the Houston Astros.

The Bonds market has experienced inflation between March and May.

“Well, I think he’s become more of a draw than either [Delgado or Bagwell], and he’s going to be breaking eight to 10 major league records during the next few years,” Boras said.

Bonds is making $10.3 million in the final year of a three-year, $22.9-million extension. He will have been paid $74.45 million in his nine years with the Giants, who have a payroll of $62.5 million and had revenue of $165 million--trailing only the New York Yankees and Mets among the 30 clubs--during the first season in Pacific Bell Park.

However, Sabean said in the spring that the Giants would have to see how the ledger reads in October, that with Jeff Kent eligible for free agency after the 2002 season, they didn’t want a repeat of the 1996 off-season when Bonds and Matt Williams were due half of the total payroll, forcing the Giants to trade Williams.

For Bonds, now at 519 career homers and counting, someone is going to pay him--be it the Giants or a possible rival.

“He’s at a point in life where he really appreciates the game,” Boras said. “He knows he has five or six years left, wants to draw as much as he can out of it, and, of course, put himself in position to win.”

Exiled Dodger Devon White may have a tough time catching Bonds in homers, but Bonds may have a tough time catching White in grand slams. White is about to end May with three this month, tying a big league record.

In fact, he hit as many in 30 at-bats as Robin Yount did during 20 years with the same Milwaukee Brewers. In his career with the bases loaded, White is batting .345 with 11 home runs. In five plate appearances with the bases loaded this year, he has driven in 15 runs--two more than he did with the Dodgers in any situation all of last year--hammering three homers and a double.

The Chicago Cubs began the weekend with a five-game winning streak after losing eight in a row. First baseman Julio Zuleta turned it around for his long-cursed team last weekend when he began a daily ritual of lighting a bonfire of newspapers in the dugout before games and using it to bless the bats. He also sets cans of deep-heating balm underneath them and rubs old chicken bones on them. It’s a rip-off of Pedro Serrano in the movie “Major League,” but as Zuleta said, “Whatever it takes, we’ll keep doing it.”