Sports Publications

Romancing the stone

Sporting News, The, July 30, 2001 by Dave Kindred

How the writer would know is anyone's guess. But an ink-stained wretch passing through the Giants' clubhouse says Barry Bonds' black leather recliner is a $3,000 piece of furniture. It sits in front of Bonds' three lockers, a living space three times that of players whose talents, if stretched, might amount to one-third of Bonds'. In this year when all things Bonds are up for analysis, that cushy recliner has come to be symbolic of ... what?

Careful what we say here, for the temptation is to extrapolate from the evidence of his interior decoration that Bonds is an elitist and that the clubhouse throne represents a nature at once imperious and self-indulgent.

That temptation should be resisted. There's precedent for exalted recliner status, and it comes from a player who was admired, respected, even beloved. After his second straight Most Valuable Player season in 1983, Dale Murphy carried into the Braves' clubhouse a lordly recliner and lolled in it as his playmates plopped their lesser glutei onto wooden stools.

Full of aw-shucks and golly-gee, Murphy said, "They made me bring it in here."

Well, Barry Bonds has won three MVPs, as many as any player ever, and he well might nave won two or three more had he leavened his pound or crabbiness with an ounce of charm. He has won eight Gold Gloves and is the game's only player with more than 400 home runs and 400 stolen bases (nearing 500-500). With Willie Mays and Hank Aaron as his primary competition, Bonds may be the game's greatest living player.

So the question is: If two MVP seasons earned the sainted Murphy a reclining view of sweaty jockstraps, what's our problem with Barry Bonds?

Bonds says fans "think I'm arrogant. Not nice. Not fan-friendly."

In a New York Times piece last week, he despaired of "these people in the stands (who) think they can pay money and insult you all day." As for Bill Cosby's long-ago advice that Bonds should smile more: "He said just because someone's mean to you doesn't mean you have to be mean back. (But when) Bill does a rerun show, they can't yell in his face, `This is a rerun show!' or `I hate Jell-O!' The public has so much access to us."

There's something about Barry Bonds. There's a tightness about him, a gathering of strength and mass that is different from that in other great baseball players. He moves swiftly and surely, and yet at 6-2 and 210 pounds reminds us more of a tight end than of an outfielder fleet and graceful. The bat held 2 inches from the knob, the big man taking a little man's compact swing, Bonds hits more home runs by accident than most players hit by intent.

The tightness is psychological, as well. Bonds wears a silver cross in his left earlobe, even when playing, combative and defiant of convention. And while Bonds well knows the $3,000 recliner is a sitting-duck metaphor for journalists parachuting in to do another gifted-jerk piece, the easy chair still sits in front of his private TV, the furniture practically shouting, "I'm Barry Bonds and you're not."

We're all insecure, even (particularly?) those of us with thrones.

"I'm saying, `God, why now? Why not in October, God?'" Bonds said last month on television. It was Bonds' admission that for all the wonders he has done, he has not done them when the air is electric with suspense. In 27 division series and NLCS games, he is hitting .196 with one home run and six runs batted in. Folks in Pittsburgh still ache to think that the Braves' lead-footed Sid Bream scored on a single to left--to Bonds, whose throw was a foot wide, a heartbeat late--and kept the Pirates out of the 1991 World Series.

Bonds admits to feeling pressure. This season he has said: "I'd really like to stop talking about homers. That would take a lot of pressure off me, ease my mind a little bit." ... "The next thing you find out, you're knocking on the door and you're a little bit nervous. You find you're on center stage. You're out there by yourself alone." ... "I don't like a crowd of people around. I just don't feel comfortable. I don't know if I get nervous, or if I feel choked or whatnot. It's scary."

Though he all but promises not to hit 71 home runs--"I'm not Mark McGwire"--some witnesses these days see an uppercut plane to his swing.

Some have even seen boyish and endearing joy in his demeanor, as on the night of his 500th home run when he leaped at home plate and stomped the dish with both feet.

And some believe that night was revelatory for words Bonds used in a ceremony after the home run. He thanked his parents, and he thanked Willie Mays and Willie McCovey. Then this fellow famous for surliness said to the fans at Pac Bell Park, "Most of all, thanks to all of you. I love you, and I'm proud to De in a San Francisco Giant uniform."

Ah, sweet love in the summertime. Romantics hope it lasts into the winter.