BONDS UPDATES

[jg]

May 7th-May19th

Not a **** thing.

[___ Eats It]

Not true, he did get plunked by Springer, which I enjoyed tremendously...

[jg]

OH NO !  He hit one.

[___ Eats It]

Even a blind squirrel finds a nut... at this rate, he'll hit #715 by... oh, say, August...

[smazza]

still # 1 on ob%

what a thrill to watch

you felllas must be baseball fans

[jg]

on the bench again. what type of hourly rate does he get?

[smazza]

Bonds chatty, 'happy,' but Giants' bats fall flat

Henry Schulman, Chronicle Staff Writer

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

 

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Bonds Passes Babe Ruth

Knapp: Long road to No. 755

Chatty Bonds says he's 'softer.'

Photos

Knapp: Bye-bye, Babe

The shot not heard on radio

Standing ovation lures Bonds from dugout

Who got the Bonds ball? A hungry fan

Ostler: Rockies' Kim did us all a favor

Notebook: History, Wright will forget loss

Two Cents: What would you say to Barry?

Chronicle's Splash blog on the Giants

Audio slide show: John Shea on Bonds' milestone

More Giants news

SFGate's Barry Bonds page

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Miami -- A day after The Big 715, normalcy returned to the Giants, in this case their habit of getting keelhauled by pitchers of little repute and big earned-run averages.

Scott Olsen, a left-hander whose ERA in five starts this month was 10.07, held the Giants to a Ray Durham solo homer over seven innings Monday night. Matt Morris was throwing a nice game, too, until manager Felipe Alou made a rare and ill-fated decision to intentionally walk a man, Miguel Cabrera, in the sixth.

The next two batters, Josh Willingham and Jeremy Hermida, hit run-scoring singles for a 3-0 lead that turned into a 5-1 victory for the Marlins, who cannot be dismissed as easy prey because they are 16-33. They beat Greg Maddux and Pedro Martinez on successive days last week and have some young hitters who can rake.

Barry Bonds went 1-for-4 with a single after a convivial 15-minute chat with reporters at his locker, during which he called the 2006 Giants the best bunch of guys with whom he has ever shared a clubhouse, detailed the psychological stress of his chase for Babe Ruth and declared he will play in 2007, body willing, because of something his 16-year-old son Nikolai told him.

"My son said, 'Dad, I watch you and it looks like you can still play,' " Bonds said. " 'You have times when you don't run as well when you play every day, but, Dad, you can still hit a ball a long way. If you work at it all the time you can keep on doing it.' "

Much is made of Bonds' health, and rightly so, although he raised an interesting point. He guessed he has played more this season than he did at this point in 2004, his last full year. In fact, he has started 40 of the Giants' first 51 games, same as two years ago.

Whether he can make that boast in September is another matter, but if he plays a full 2006 season and chooses to come back in 2007, he will break Henry Aaron's home-run record of 755. So predicted Alou, who said reaching 755 will be a "piece of cake, unless there is a prohibition and nobody pitches to him."

Alou believes Bonds will accelerate his home-run pace now because pitchers will be less reluctant to go after him and land in the history books. The Marlins challenged him all four times.

Thus far, Bonds has looked incapable of going kapow every seven or eight at-bats as he once did. He is missing a lot of pitches he used to send over walls. It took him three weeks to go from 713 to 715, but he suggested that was more mental than physical.

"You're talking about a huge legend," Bonds said of Babe Ruth, "and you've got Hank Aaron, which is another legend. It's like a 'wow' (goes) into your whole mind. Then, when you have media 24 hours a day and you can't get into your locker, you can't do anything, you're trying to stay within yourself and keep your same thought process, and you're basically trying to take yourself back to where you don't have any home runs, like your first day in the major leagues.

"It's difficult. It's hard, and somebody after me is going to have to deal with the same thing, and there'll probably be more media even then. It's not easy."

Who will be the next to challenge Ruth and Aaron?

"I think Alex Rodriguez has a great shot at it," said Bonds of the 30-year-old Yankee, who is at 442.

Consider yourself anointed, Alex.

Perhaps Bonds can accelerate his home runs if he starts throwing tantrums and browbeating his teammates, for he often said he is better when angrier, and right now he's not angry. As his teammates privately celebrated Bonds' homer in the clubhouse Sunday, they posed with him for a ragtag team picture, a bit ironic given Bonds' habit of skipping the formal team photo every year. Some Giants were dressed, others still in uniform.

Bonds' teammates had brought out champagne. Asked if he was surprised, he said, "No, not with this team, not at all. They've stood behind me since Day 1 of spring training. This is the best group, as a whole, I've ever played with in my entire life, ever. It's overwhelming the way they treat me, the way we stand behind each other, the way they've backed me all year. It's great.

"The funny part of it is, it's brought a softer side of me, and I don't want to go back to the other person. I'm having more fun and it's probably hurting my career because I'm enjoying it. I'm not mad. I'm just happy, man."

It was hard for Bonds to be happy after Monday's game. Olsen, whom he had not faced, held him to a groundout into short right, a single and a strikeout. Reliever Logan Kensing got Bonds to foul out on a ball that Willingham ran 6 furlongs from left-center to catch.

Bonds is expected to play tonight, then sit Wednesday, ahead of an off day and a weekend series in New York, where the questions he hears will be something less than convivial.

[___ Eats It]

Bonds sucks nuts.