Bonds, Giants close to finalizing deal

[BengalszoneBilly]

I hope he fails the physical.

Bonds, Giants close to finalizing deal By BEN WALKER, AP Baseball Writer

Barry Bonds arrived in San Francisco on Monday, set to take a physical and complete a contract with the Giants nearly two months after they agreed on financial terms.

A federal investigation into Bonds' role in a steroids case and a report that the slugger tested positive for amphetamines complicated the negotiations.

Neither side said much about those problems during the 7 1/2-week delay. That secrecy, plus lingering ill will between Bonds and team owner Peter Magowan, prompted talk the Giants might try to back out of the deal — despite the left fielder being 22 home runs from breaking Hank Aaron's career mark of 755.

But with spring training starting next month, and the All-Star game in San Francisco this summer, the sides settled their differences.

Bonds traveled to the Bay Area from his home in Beverly Hills, Calif., for the physical. If the 42-year-old star and his oft-injured knees check out OK, he'll sign a one-year deal for $15.8 million.

He can earn another $4.2 million in performance bonuses based on how much he plays. If he matches last year's effort — 493 plate appearances, 130 games — he'll get the whole amount.

Bonds hit .270 with 26 home runs and 77 RBIs, and drew 115 walks. A day after the season ended, Magowan said Bonds would no longer be the centerpiece of the franchise if he played for the Giants in 2007.

Bonds filed for free agency and the seven-time NL MVP drew interest from Oakland, St. Louis, San Diego and other teams.

The Giants and Bonds agreed on financial terms on Dec. 7, the day that baseball's winter meetings ended. Since then, it's been slow going on finalizing the deal.

A federal grand jury is still investigating whether Bonds perjured himself in 2003 when he testified during the BALCO steroid distribution case that he hadn't knowingly taken any performance-enhancing drugs.

Bonds failed an amphetamines test last season, the New York Daily News reported this month. The newspaper said that when Bonds first learned of the result, he attributed it to a substance he took from teammate Mark Sweeney's locker.

In a public statement, Bonds cleared Sweeney and said, "he did not give me anything whatsoever and has nothing to do with this matter." Bonds didn't address whether he took amphetamines.

Bonds, who has hit 734 home runs in 21 major league seasons, has repeatedly denied using performance-enhancing drugs.

[MacD BengalFan]

I don't see the Giants failing Bonds feeble knees, they want him to break the tainted HR record in San Fran.

[BengalszoneBilly]

I don't see the Giants failing Bonds feeble knees, they want him to break the tainted HR record in San Fran.

Then I'd like to see major league pitchers unite, and walk him everytime he comes up to the plate! Sorry but IMHO he doesn't deserve to displace Hank Aaron as the home run king.

BALL FOUR!! Barry...take your base you gimp.

[Kirkendall]

Bonds, even the accusations, has always been a great player.

HOWEVER. Pitchers never challenge big-named hitters inside anymore. Baseball has lost it. As long we lose the Roger Clemons types (throw inside, nail ya in the head, etc), then hitters will just sit back and tee-off.

So not only is this the steroid era, but this is the pitchers never challenge hitters anymore era.

BTW, MLB rejected the contract.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2748744

"Complicating matters, Bonds' contract was not approved by the commissioner's office because it contained a personal-appearance provision, a baseball executive said Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity because those details had not been made public."

[rwalling]

Bonds passing Aaron will be an embarassment for baseball, a replacement of the best about baseball (Aaron, a classy team player who helped tear down racial barriers) with the absolute worst (an egomaniac, cheater who established new stereotypes of the modern, artifical, fan and teammate unfriendly baseball player). I dread the possibility of it happening. I'm a big fan of Barry's arthritic knees.

It would kill Aaron, but if Barry passes him, I hope he skips the whole sordid affair.

[Dawg BpG]

Baseball turned a blind eye to steroids so I hope Barry breaks the record.

Not becaus eI think Barry is a great guiy or anything, but so Bud Selig NEVER, EVER gets into the hall of fame.

He ruined the game by allowing Mac, and Sosa to roid up and get famous.

In my humble opinion, IN THIS ERA of baseball..."If you don't cheat, you're not trying".

Rot in hell Bud Selig, I hate your guts, and trying to paint this picture of this being ALL BARRY'S falut is totally ludicrous and HE KNOWS IT!!!!!!

My preditions for Barry this season...

.280 30 HR, 250BB

Barry was a hall of famer and a mutiple MVP winner well before he took roids. Barry Bonds even if you strip his roid numbers would be a first ballot hall of famer...Thing is, you can't strip his stats....and if MAC is even on the ballot...Barry is in there first ballot.

[jditty47]

problem is barry bonds is an a**h***. hes always been one and always will be one. he is the only player to not allow his name used for mass marketing, example video games.

but he is a great player. i dont know if steroids are what he used, mb an enhancement, but he definately changed halfway through his career. ill tell you this, looking at the genepool, there will be kids crazier stronger than barry in the years to come.

if he does or doesnt break the record his career should speak for itself, he deserves to be in the hall of fame, but so should pete rose - arguably the best hitter to ever play the game.

honestly, i dont feel anything outside of the field should be viewed as a deterant for someone making the hall of fame. i dont care if someone murders someone.

[Dawg BpG]

I totally agree with you here, Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe should be in the Hall, and that barry is a jerk.

I will say that Stronger doesn't = Better. I have seen too much baseball to know that. Barry Bonds is the best in pitch recognition I have EVER seen. He cann tell what your throwing sooner than any hitter I have seen.

You can work out and get that.

JMHO

[MacD BengalFan]

My preditions for Barry this season...

.280 30 HR, 250BB

I think your prediction is going to be wrong as he is refusing to sign a modified contract that MLB got involved with. I hope he doesn't as he is everything that is wrong with baseball and doesn't deserve the media attention he is attracting. And if he does happen to break Hammering Hank's record, MLB should just ignore it as nearly all of the HR's are tainted by the smell of steroids. Barry needs to retire to save himself and MLB the embarrassment of the impending indictment.

[BengalszoneBilly]

Barry needs to retire to save himself and MLB the embarrassment of the impending indictment.

Unfortunately I just don't think that's going to happen by him willingly. Baseball is in for an ugly, ugly chapter. From sportsillustrated.cnn.com:

In for a penny ...

Bonds tells Giants he plans to play well into his 40s

Posted: Tuesday February 6, 2007 12:38PM

Barry Bonds has made fewer than 600 plate appearances the past two seasons combined but feels he can keep playing at least through 2008.

Ever Bud Selig's worst recurring nightmare is entering its fourth season: a man with connections to a federal steroid investigation, who faces the possibility of indictment, is the face of baseball and is on the cusp of breaking one of the game's most cherished records.

As much as Selig likes to talk about this "Golden Age of Baseball", and as exemplary as ballplayers such as Albert Pujols, David Ortiz and Ryan Howard have been, Selig knows that Bonds, because he has been one of the all-time greats and has had Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron in his home run crosshairs, is an unwelcome diversion who demands attention.

The news isn't about to get better for Selig any time soon. Bonds told the Giants this winter, through his agent, that he has no plans to retire -- not after this season and probably not after next season, either. (Feel free to completely ignore all of Bonds' retirement talk soliloquies passed off as news stories over the coming months, just as you should have over the past two years.)

Bonds asked for an easily-attainable vesting option for 2008, with plans to play even beyond that. The Giants, who have no interest in bringing Bonds back for 2008, are quite pleased with themselves for "holding the line" on the Bonds' negotiations, limiting him to one year and $15.8 million (plus incentives) whenever they get around to massaging the contract language about the little matter of a possible indictment.

Given Bonds' strong intention to extend his career into his mid-40s -- he turns 43 in July -- it is inevitable that he will exceed Aaron's record 755 home runs, and maybe by a lot. His agent, Jeff Borris, has raised the notion of 1,000 home runs.

Selig and much of the rest of major league baseball will hold its nose and salute Bonds with as little enthusiasm as possible. As one baseball executive put it when it comes to the weariness of all things Bonds, "Barry just doesn't get it and never will." He points out that Bonds is so out of touch with reality that he has tried enlisting Selig -- of all people -- to lobby Aaron, a longtime personal friend of Selig's, to show more public support for him, especially when it comes to a blessing of the new record as legitimate.

So Bonds and Selig are stuck with each other. There is some poetic justice in that marriage because it's more fallout from an era on Selig's watch when players and owners did far too little to curb the boom in performance-enhancing drugs, acting only out of sufficient public embarrassment or threat.

I wondered why the Giants, who finished in third place with a losing record last year in a season in which Bonds stayed off the DL, would want Bonds back even for one year. The team needs to get younger and more athletic and is in danger of writing off a third consecutive losing season as a prop to the management and maintenance of one aging slugger. Why not move out from under Bonds this year rather than next? Is it a ploy to sell tickets? No, the Giants host the All-Star Game this season and would not be looking at a significant dropoff without Bonds. So I asked Peter Magowan, the Giants' owner.

"I told [GM] Brian Sabean, 'You figure out how to put the best baseball team possible on the field and I don't want to hear one word about marketing reasons,'" Magowan said.

Fair enough. That may explain why Sabean took early runs at free agents Alfonso Soriano and Carlos Lee and monitored any thoughts the Red Sox had about trading Manny Ramirez. None of those alternatives grew every serious.

"With Soriano, we didn't know if he really is a left fielder, and whether he could hit in the middle of the lineup," Magowan said. "Lee was a legitimate candidate and we had an interest in him, but Houston had a better chance to get him because he has a ranch in Texas and it is nearer to his home in Panama."

Magowan said trade talks to find a replacement for Bonds never turned serious because "teams always ask about our young pitching ... [Matt] Cain, [Noah] Lowry, [Jonathan] Sanchez, [Tim] Lincecum, we consider all of them virtually untouchable."

Meanwhile, while other teams did give consideration to signing Bonds, none did so with serious, sustained intent. For instance, the GM of one NL team said his club did discuss Bonds, but "there's no way we were going there." An AL GM said his team dropped all preliminary interest in Bonds because "they told us they needed eight of his people around him all the time, with full access."

The Giants did succeed in getting Bonds to leave his assorted hangers-on out of the clubhouse and they did keep the deal at one year that still left them with money to overpay Barry Zito, so they did well on the business end with Bonds. "The best guy to fill our [middle of the order] hole at the end of the day was Barry Bonds," Magowan said.

And now that they are committed to Bonds, the Giants and Magowan are getting a little goofy about the same guy they thought about replacing, now raving about his defense ("He played a good left field in the last six weeks of the season," Magowan said), his influence on teammates ("He's a proven winner who makes everybody around him better"), and his health ("He looks much better, much leaner").

So now the Giants have talked themselves into Bonds having a better season than last year, while he hits between Rich Aurilia and Ray Durham, mind you.

"In '06 he was coming off an '05 season in which he only played 17 games," Magowan said. "There was a lot of pain and three knee operations. He was unable to run to get himself in the best physical condition last year. This offseason he has been able to run every day. Barry in '07 has a good chance of being a more productive player because he's healthier."

Yes, Bonds can still hit, with his hot streak over the final seven weeks of last season keeping him in a Giants uniform as much as anything. And when a player as great as Bonds maintains his fire to play, you would be mistaken to write him off on age alone. This season, and the 22 home runs he needs for the home run record, might not be the last hurrah for Bonds.