Bonds’ Words Say Plenty

I stood there for the whole hour, in the middle of the media mob at the table where Barry Bonds was sitting, my tape recorder purring and my brain numbing.

I have since seen this session on the eve of the All-Star game described as “entertaining” by a writer for a national sports magazine.

To each his own.

As Bonds consistently belittled the questions and intelligence of the reporters surrounding him, as he talked about wiping out Babe Ruth and about the importance of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo. (an important museum, indeed, that Bonds had snubbed when it staged a dinner in his honor 17 months ago), I didn’t view him as entertaining as much as insufferably arrogant and hypocritical.

What’s new?

Bonds is who he is and what he is -- as locked into a persona as he is to a fat fastball.

Make no mistake: Nothing should distract from the amazing and ongoing scope of his accomplishments.

He hit 73 home runs at 37, won a batting title at 38.

Now, turning 39 on Thursday and carrying the burden of his father’s struggle with cancer, Bonds may be headed for his sixth most-valuable-player award, powering the San Francisco Giants into first place in the National League West lead by hitting 30 home runs at the break to join Jimmie Foxx as the only players to do it 12 consecutive seasons.

“I can still do the things that keep me in a group [with the game’s best players], but I can’t keep up with them anymore on an all-around basis [because of diminishing defense],” Bonds said with a measure of humility in Chicago, where he also repeated an earlier statement that, since he lives in Los Angeles, his ultimate future may be as a designated hitter with the Angels, although he would prefer to stay in the National League.

With that, of course, Bonds is getting ahead of himself.

His continuing ascent up the home run ladder will be as a Giant -- and he began the second half only 17 behind his godfather Willie Mays, No. 3 on the list at 660.

After Mays, only Ruth (714) and Hank Aaron (755) are left, and in remarks that can be construed only as biased and colored, Bonds said he is really interested in erasing only Ruth, and he further used the All-Star platform to blitz baseball reporters and historians for consistently failing to give Negro leagues players the appreciation and respect they are due.

“You have a Negro Leagues museum over here in Kansas City, and you have a Hall of Fame over here [in Cooperstown, N.Y.], and yet you tell me there’s no segregation and discrimination in baseball?” Bonds said. “Why isn’t there one institution? We, as future black Hall of Famers, or future minorities -- even Hispanics -- should recognize the Negro Leagues museum because we are an extension of that museum. We could put stuff in the regular Hall of Fame too, but we are an extension of that [Kansas City] museum.”

Bonds is to be applauded for becoming an enthusiastic supporter of the Kansas City museum and urging minority athletes to visit it and learn the history (“ ... without that, it’s going to be wiped away”).

It’s just that he was citing segregation having never seen the extensive Negro leagues displays at the Cooperstown museum and he had not even responded to messages from the Kansas City museum when it staged the dinner in his honor.

He apparently became a convert in June when the Giants played an interleague series in Kansas City and the museum sent a car for him and he was given a personal tour by the inimitable Buck O’Neill that left him in tears.

Now, Bonds even hinted of a conspiracy by reporters and historians to diminish the accomplishments of Negro leagues players in an era when accurate records of those leagues were difficult to obtain.

Bonds, in fact, said his 73 home runs in 2001 should not be regarded as the single-season record because they fell short of the 84 that some credit former Negro league star Josh Gibson with having hit.

“In my heart,” Bonds said, “[that record] belongs to Josh Gibson.”

That’s fine, of course, but then Bonds, in addressing the career list, seemed to be expressing the segregation and discrimination of which he was accusing others.

He said the 660 of Mays and 755 of Aaron would be “tough numbers for me” because both players were his idols and “if it does happen [and he first passes Mays], the only number I’ll care about is Babe Ruth’s.

“That’s it -- 715. Because as a left-handed hitter, I wiped him out. That’s it. And to the baseball world, Babe Ruth is baseball, am I right?”

To emphasize his point, Bonds swept his hand across the table as if wiping away crumbs, then did the same to point out he had already wiped out Ruth’s single-season slugging percentage and on-base percentage records and was closing in on passing the left-handed Ruth for No. 2 on the all-time walks list.

“And I’ll take his home runs, and that’s it,” Bonds said. “Don’t talk about him no more. I’m the next generation of Negro league ballplayers. Hank Aaron can keep that 755 home run record.”

So let’s see: To underscore his newfound belief that Negro league players were treated unjustly, you disregard and disrespect Babe Ruth?

There was reaction, of course.

The executive director of the Babe Ruth Museum called it a “complete disregard for the history and tradition of the game,” and Bonds, in what almost seemed to be a prepared statement, said Thursday that his comments were meant as a compliment and he would consider it a huge accomplishment to pass Ruth because he symbolizes baseball, “and if there’s a record you want to go after, it’s Babe Ruth.”

Well, do you suppose the backpedaling Bonds understands the risk inherent in the Curse of the Bambino?

Sure, and that would be to argue he’s more entertaining than arrogant and irritating.