A Giant problem for Bonds

[BengalszoneBilly]

I must agree. It will be nothing but a barrage of boos if and when he does. IMHO he needs to hold off and wait until he returns to the only friendly confines known to him...AT&T park in San Francisco!

From S.I.com's Tom Verducci:

SAN FRANCISCO -- A 3-and-0 pitch from Florida righthander Sergio Mitre told you everything you needed to know about how important it is for Barry Bonds to keep history contained to his one safe house, AT&T Park. The Giants trailed, 1-0, in the second inning Sunday and Bonds, on the last day of a Giants homestand, was looking at four plate appearances to hit the two home runs necessary to become the all-time home run champion. He was not about to let one of those plate appearances go by without one more big, loopy, pull-conscious swing in the only place in America where he is not booed and ridiculed.

And so Bonds did something he hadn't done in 48 such 3-and-0 counts all year: he swung at it and put it in play. It was a fastball running away, not a cripple pitch, and an anxious Bonds rolled over on it, grounding routinely to second base. It was the first time since Aug. 8, 2006 that Bonds put a 3-and-0 pitch into play. His other three plate appearances dissolved into similarly fruitless efforts: a broken-bat flyball to rightfield on another outside pitch he tried to pull, another rollover grounder to second base, and a high pop-up that landed on the mound for a charitable and harmless single.

Gee, what's the hurry? Only this: six games this week in Los Angeles and San Diego, where the home run chase degenerates into an unpleasant, even ugly spectacle starting Tuesday at Dodger Stadium. Bonds probably will play in four of those games. And privately, Giants people know the atmosphere on the road is so toxic for Bonds that he may do whatever he can to save 756 for the home folks.

One Giants source recalled what happened in September of 2004 when Bonds went to Milwaukee sitting on 699 home runs and San Diego pitcher Jake Peavy noted he would be glad to see Bonds get his milestone homer out of the way before the Padres saw him next. Except Bonds cut down on his stroke in Milwaukee, managed three hits in nine at-bats, and promptly whacked No. 700 off Peavy the first time he set foot in his home batter's box again. (And yes, he was that good.)

The Giants have had conversations over the past few years with clubs about contingency plans should Bonds hit a milestone homer on the road. Do they stop the game? Is a scoreboard mention enough? Except the Giants never had to find out what would happen. You have to go back to career homer No. 400 in 1998 to find a round number, record-breaking or tie-breaking home run (such as 715) that Bonds hit anywhere but San Francisco.

To hit number 755 in Los Angeles or San Diego is no cause for concern. Not even the Giants have planned a ceremony if the tying home run occurs at home. It's having the record-breaker come on the road that is such a monumental nightmare that even Bonds and his friend Bud Selig can agree is the worst-case scenario.

Firstly, poor Vin Scully. The gentlemanly Dodgers announcer, whose call of Hank Aaron's 715th home run is one of his seminal moments, is on record as having wished not to call Bonds' 715th, and now he he has to face the prospect of calling 756 without disdain interrupting his usual eloquence? Scully found such perfect perspective for Aaron's historic shot -- a black man setting the record in the Deep South -- that surely he would have to put Bonds' record-breaker in the context of steroids. How would that sound at the Smithsonian?

Secondly, can you imagine the Dodgers stopping the game and holding a ceremony to honor Bonds on the field of Dodger Stadium? Sure, only a finite number of people can be eyewitnesses to such history and there's a rush for some people to claim "I was there," so you can expect an initial reaction of wonderment. But stopping the game and honoring a hated Giant at Dodger Stadium is an invitation to catcalls, boos and derogatory banners. Is that the image Bonds and Selig want to put in baseball's time capsule?

"They are the only games there," San Franciso reliever Steve Kline said about Giants games in Dodger Stadium, "where [fans] come in the first inning and leave in the ninth."

And don't think San Diego will be any kinder. It was San Diego that roasted Bonds in his first regular season games after Game of Shadows buried him in an avalanche of drug-by-drug facts dating to 1998.

Bonds has two choices here. He can keep swinging for the fences -- whacking at 3-and-0 pitches and hooking outside fastballs -- and take his chances with giving Dodgers fans or Padres fans the opportunity to ridicule him into posterity, to be viewed forever on DVD, Blu-Ray, HD-DVD and whatever new technologies are to come. Or he can make sure he hits only one home run this week, and save 756 for a seven-game homestand against Washington and Pittsburgh, the dregs of the National League. For Bonds, this city is the land of make believe. It forgives the shame be brings to the record because, well, because he wears the uniform of the home team. It's not any more complicated than that. Reality, though, exists outside of this safe house, and it threatens to be rather ugly.

"It's sad," one of his teammates observed Saturday about what will soon cease to be the greatest record in sports, "because this is the only place where it will really be accepted. Ever."