The Giant Debate

By Ross Newhan

Sept. 26, 2003 12 AM PT

It is inevitable that Barry Bonds, needing only three home runs to catch Willie Mays at 660, will surpass his godfather at No. 3 on baseball’s all-time list.

If it doesn’t happen during this final weekend of the regular season, it will happen next April, when the emotional burden of his father’s recent death might not hang so heavily on Bonds. Then, only Babe Ruth at 714 and Henry Aaron at 755 will be ahead of him.

The question is, can he truly catch and surpass Mays, or is the home run list one thing and their comparative stature another?

Do we salute Bonds as one of the great hitters of all time but still envision Mays as the Say Hey Kid who could do it all?

“There is no comparison when it comes to being the complete player,” said former Dodger shortstop Maury Wills, who shared the National League landscape with Mays. “Willie was the most complete player I ever saw, and that’s not to take anything away from Bonds, who continues to be one of the most dominating hitters I’ve seen.

“They’re just two different types. Bonds is a slugger. Mays was a ballplayer. The ultimate. My longtime friend Bobby Bragan ... always said that if you gave a baseball test to a player and he simply answered Willie Mays to every question, he’d be certain to pass.”

It is a general theme among those fortunate to have had a prolonged view of both that Mays was the personification of the complete player, maybe the finest ever, while Bonds may be emerging as the greatest hitter.

Certainly, no player has ever turned his twilight years into a full-fledged assault on the record book as the 39-year-old Bonds has.

He slugged 73 home runs for the single-season record at age 37 while also setting a slugging percentage record of .863, hit .370 to win a batting title at 38 while also setting an on-base percentage record of .582, and has now hammered 44 homers this year and 212 since 2000, the season in which he turned 36.

All of this amid a decreasing number of at-bats because of an increasing number of walks -- in-tentional and otherwise. He set a major league record by drawing 198 last year and should eclipse Rickey Henderson’s career mark next year, a feat Henderson dismisses.

“They’re putting Bonds on base intentionally,” Henderson said. “They intentionally tried to keep me off because of what I could do once I was on.”

No matter how Bonds is accruing them -- and he has been walked intentionally with a runner on first base and walked intentionally with the bases loaded -- it adds up to getting “more respect than any hitter I’ve ever seen,” former Dodger pitcher Don Newcombe said.

“Whether that says he’s better than Mays or Aaron or some of the best hitters of my generation I’m not sure,” Newcombe said. “I’ve just never seen a hitter shown this much respect. I never saw [Bob] Gibson or [Don] Drysdale or any of the other great pitchers have the respect for a hitter that pitchers and managers now do with Bonds.”

A large measure of that stems from the consistency with which Bonds makes pitchers pay -- his home run ratio this year is one every 8.6 at-bats -- when he is not walked.

Some of it also stems from the limited protection behind him and the expansion-diluted but swiftly improving caliber of pitching in the major leagues.

Whether the staffs Mays faced were better than those Bonds has faced -- “you have to remember that there were four-man rotations then compared to five now and the No. 5 can’t be better than the No. 4,” former Dodger general manager Buzzie Bavasi said -- it’s also all relative, Bavasi added.

“I don’t think anyone could throw, run, field and hit with Willie, but Bonds is as good with the bat as anyone I’ve seen,” he said from his La Jolla home.

Bavasi recalled that Mays was such a complete player and immediate thorn to the Dodgers as the New York Giant center fielder that when the Selective Service board was considering a hardship deferment for him, he sent a good-natured wire to director Lewis B. Hershey suggesting that the Dodgers would contribute $5,000 a year to help Mays support his family if the Army retained him.

Bavasi laughed and said Hershey wired back, “Sorry, Buzzie, I’m a Giants fan.”

Mays had those 660 home runs and 3,283 hits and record 7,095 outfield putouts even though he lost almost two full years to the service and innumerable homers while playing amid the distorted dimensions of the Polo Grounds in New York and the numbing wind of Candlestick Park.

Bonds also spent seven seasons in Candlestick, and most left-handed sluggers consider his new lair, Pacific Bell Park, a home run graveyard.

Noted teammate J.T. Snow recently: “Barry is the only left-handed hitter alive who is strong enough and talented enough to keep a ball hit down the line at Pac Bell fair.”

Bonds, of course, isn’t most, and neither was Mays, and maybe we should leave it at that.

Maybe we should be satisfied that Bonds’ ascent has stimulated a reexamination of Mays’ fabulous career.

A reason to show in fading black and white again that catch for the ages against Vic Wertz in the 1954 World Series, to recall how the peerless Jim Murray once described his glove as “the place where triples go to die,” to see him again running out from under his cap, scoring from first on singles, and to hear Wills say, when reminded that the younger Bonds was also a complete player, accumulating Gold Gloves and stealing bases to the extent that he now is the only player with 500 steals and 500 homers that, “Willie would have said, ‘I didn’t know it was important or I’d have stolen 500 too.’

“I heard him say just that when someone mentioned to him that Jose Canseco had become the first player to go 40-40 in a season.”

Said Newcombe: “Willie had the greatest reflexes and instincts next to Jackie Robinson of any player I ever saw. He never missed a cutoff man or threw to the wrong base. He never made a mistake running the bases, and he was a great hitter -- both for power and hitting to all fields.

“He was a notorious first-ball hitter, and we had a manager in Brooklyn, Charlie Dressen, who told us that it would be a $50 fine if we let him hit the first pitch. So, where would I throw the first pitch? I’d throw it at him. I’d never hit him, but I’d throw it at him, get him out of the box, give him something to think about. Of course, all the ... would do is rip the second pitch somewhere.

“I played on All-Star and barnstorming teams with Willie, played against him for a lot of years and saw him do some amazing things.

“In my view, he’s the greatest ever.”

Perhaps, but Newcombe also thinks Bonds, who might soon win his sixth most-valuable-player award, can maintain his current level for several more seasons and is likely to be recognized as “the greatest to ever swing a bat.”

“He’s going to break Willie’s record, of course, then he’ll pass Ruth and probably Aaron as well,” Newcombe said. “Considering what he’s doing at 39, there’s no reason he can’t play until he’s 45 and still get the respect he does now.”

For now, however, an emotionally drained Bonds is scheduled to play only two of the four weekend games against the Dodgers.

And some close to the Giants believe he would just as soon spend the winter linked to his godfather -- “that’s where my heart is,” he said recently -- on the home run ladder before going after Ruth.

At the All-Star game, Bonds noted that 660 and 755 would be the toughest numbers for him because of his regard for the two men reaching those plateaus.

Suggesting he or anyone was better than Mays, however?

Now that’s the toughest.

(Begin Text of Infobox)

BONDS

Years ... 18

MVPs ... 5

Gold Gloves ... 8

Games ... 2,566

AB ... 8,716

Hits ... 2,590

2B ... 535

HRs ... 657