Bonds Suffers, Delivers a Blow

Even before he hammered his 68th home run Friday night, even before he circled the bases and exultantly raised both arms toward the sky, pumping them once, then once more, there had been emotion.

Barry Bonds sat in a pregame news conference with tears in his eyes.

“I lost a close friend yesterday and this is hard for me,” he said.

Franklin Bradley, 37, a friend of 13 years and occasional bodyguard, had died Thursday in a Bay Area hospital while undergoing surgery.

Yes, Bonds said, he could feel good about what’s happening, to be closing in on Mark McGwire’s home run record and to have his team in the pennant race as the clock continues to tick is gratifying because he can feel good as an individual without feeling guilty, but ...

Well, you lose a close friend, you have the nation experience a tragedy, you have a national magazine portray the clubhouse as 24 San Francisco Giants against one, and “every time I have the opportunity to exhale or breathe, whatever you want to call it, something has come up that has been difficult for me,” Bonds said.

“Right now,” he continued, “I haven’t had time to think about anything or do anything. Every time I want to enjoy all of this for a minute, something else happens. I mean, I’m just praying real hard that we get a chance to win. I’ve got a lot of things going on in my mind right now and I’m just trying to stay as calm as I can and not be a distraction to the team.”

Amid the growing pressure and widening microscope, the uncharacteristically emotional Bonds again displayed what Manager Dusty Baker called a “highly sustained level of concentration and focus,” the key to a season in which eight games remain and Bonds needs three home runs to eclipse McGwire’s 1998 record of 70.

His 68th helped the Giants lead the San Diego Padres, 10-5, in the ninth inning. The Giants hoped to stay within striking distance of the Arizona Diamondbacks in the National League West.

It generated a curtain call ovation from a sellout crowd of 41,098 at Pacific Bell Park and brought smiles to the face of his dad, Bobby Bonds, a Giants’ scout who was sitting next to Peter Magowan, the club’s managing general partner.

It came on a 3-and-0 pitch from rookie right-hander Jason Middlebrook in the second inning and travelled 438 feet to an appreciative fan in the center field bleachers.

Middlebrook, who had never faced Bonds before yielding two home runs Sunday in San Diego, wanted no part of him Friday night and was undoubtedly hoping he wouldn’t swing at 3 and 0, but Bonds was salivating.

“Barry has the most efficient swing in the game,” a Middlebrook teammate named Tony Gwynn was saying before the game. “It’s short, knob to the ball. It’s so good that he doesn’t have to hit strikes. He’s a contact hitter with power.”

Bonds proved it again on one of the few hittable pitches he saw Friday night.

He walked against Middlebrook in the first and fourth innings, struck out against Wascar Serrano in the sixth and hit a two-run double off David Lee in the seventh, the three RBI giving him a career-high 131.

In addition, the two walks gave him 164 and a National League record. McGwire had set the NL mark of 162 while hitting those 70 homers in 1998.

Bonds came in with an astounding on-base percentage of .502 and is likely to break Babe Ruth’s major league record of 170 walks in a season, set in 1973.

It is becoming a tough year for the Babe.

His record for career walks was broken in April by Rickey Henderson, and the all-time stolen base king--a cinch Hall of Famer like Bonds and the retiring Gwynn--entered Friday night’s game needing only five hits for 3,000 and two runs to break Ty Cobb’s major league record.

The Padres had held their 42-year-old leadoff hitter out of the last two games of a four-game series in Colorado so that he would have a shot at Cobb and 3,000 in the Bay Area, where he grew up, lives and enjoyed some of his best years during four stints with the Oakland Athletics.

Sitting in the San Diego dugout before Friday night’s game, Henderson said Cobb has been on his mind since he first saw grainy film clips while an Oakland minor leaguer and felt he could become a similar player, a guy who could “control and dominate” a game without hitting home runs. The record for runs, he said, would underscore what he has been all about and, if he sets the record here, he will be out there digging up the plate.