NewsQueryFU (NQFU)

Nearly a month ago, San Francisco presented Barry Bonds with the key to the city. Friday, the Giants gave Bonds the keys to the street, announcing that the free agent-to be won’t be back next season.

In the press conference announcing the decision, Giants owner Peter Magowan and general manager Brian Sabean lamented the need to part ways with the aging slugger, but both agreed that the time had come.

Now that Bonds is finally gone, though — albeit one season too late — we can dissect the merits of his legacy in San Francisco.

Bonds’ 15-year reign in the City by the Bay did include some good things.

For starters, Bonds put butts in the seats, first at Candlestick and later at PacBell/ SBC/AT&T Park. Love him or hate him, the guy did some exciting stuff on the baseball field. The statistics are worth checking out.

Bonds had shoulders broad enough to carry the franchise at times. The Giants won the Wild Card in 2002 and the NL West in 1997, 2000, and 2003. And who can forget 1997? When the Giants clinched the division at Candlestick, Bonds stood on the dugout and celebrated with the fans. It’s one of my best memories as a Giants fan. And even though San Francisco choked away its World Series hopes in 2002, Bonds was a huge part of the reason the Giants got as close as they did.

And of course, Bonds will be forever associated with the home run ball. The assault — and I mean assault — on McGwire’s record in 2003 was exhilarating, naive though I was to assume it was legitimate. And though many had grown tired of Bonds’ circus act coming into this season, #756 seemed a fitting reward for the remaining loyal fans.

But for all of the seemingly wonderful things that took place on the field, Bonds has been a nightmare off it. For 15 years, it was Barry’s world and his teammates, managers, the media and the fans were just living in it.

Jeff Kent was the lone Giant to stand up to Bonds, but I think Kent’s frustrations about Bonds’ selfishness were the rule rather than the exception. He just happened to be brave enough to act on them. Rick Reilly captured it pretty well back in 2001.

In addition to the dissension Bonds stirred up, a dark, shadowy cloud has followed him around for the past three or four years. Game of Shadows, Love Me, Hate Me, and dozens of other books and articles have implicated Bonds with steroid use. Debate it all you want, but the rumors and legal proceedings have become such a distraction that what happens on the field has become of secondary importance.

Lastly, there is this uneasy sense — at least in my mind — that Bonds has inhibited the Giants franchise from moving forward by his insistence upon staying in the game. There is no doubt that Bonds can hit, and it could be argued that he still is the Giants’ best hitter. But with the number of games he plays these days, and the lack of turf he covers in left field when he does, Bonds has become a liability.

And when the franchise has to allocate $16 million for 125 games and a headache, that’s going to prevent the team from getting better.

Make no mistake about it, Barry Bonds is a heck of a baseball player, and I think he’ll be a first ballot Hall of Famer. But he has overstayed his welcome in San Francisco, and as Magowan finally realized, “there comes a time when you have to go in a different direction.”

Goodbye, Barry. Goodbye and good riddance.

Bonds says he wants to continue in baseball

SAN FRANCISCO
In a not entirely unexpected coda to the continuing refrain of scandal surrounding home run record-holder Barry Bonds, the San Francisco Giants last week announced they would not renew his contract next year.

“It’s always difficult to say goodbye,” Giants owner Peter Magowan told CBS Sports. “It’s an emotional time for me. We’ve been through a lot together these 15 years. A lot of good things have happened. Unfortunately a lot of bad things have happened. But there comes a time when you have to go in a different direction.”

Bonds says he will continue to play baseball for another team, reports USA Today, and while he said he was disappointed in the team’s decision, he said he held no “ill feelings” toward the Giants.

The San Francisco Chronicle’s Henry Schulman notes that even though Bonds leaves the team as the all-time home-run leader in professional baseball, controversy surrounding him eventually wore out his welcome with team management: “The last four years were Bonds’ most controversial in San Francisco, as he became a central figure in baseball’s steroids scandal. A federal grand jury reportedly continues to hear evidence in a bid by prosecutors to indict Bonds for alleged perjury in connection with the BALCO case, and many believe his single-season home run record of 73, set in 2001, and his all-time record are tainted by drug use.”

As ESPN reports, Bonds, who has not been convicted or formally charged in any steroid-related case, has been dogged by fans who argue his historic 756th home run should be highlighted by an asterisk in the record books.

In a related development, ESPN reports that the person who bought Bonds’s record-setting baseball has set up an online poll to determine the ball’s fate: blast it into space, donate it to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, or donate it to the Hall of Fame with a branded asterisk to denote the steroid suspicions.

Just how strongly the steroid issue figures in Bonds’s departure is a matter of speculation, according to press reports. The 43-year old Bonds, while playing well lately, suffered a recent foot injury and the Giants, who have had an undistinguished season, are beginning a rebuilding program reportedly focusing on younger players.

Breaking up is hard to do.

It’s not that I’ll miss Barry Bonds—“miss” is entirely too subjective a word, even for someone who’s bled orange and black for the better part of three decades.

It’s just that Barry’ll be gone.

And I’ll know it.

And in the knowing I’ll be something a little different, a little less, than what I was before.

It’s been 15 years since Bonds signed with the Giants. In that time, No. 25 has played the part of asshole, enigma, and best damned baseball player anybody had ever seen—sometimes alternately, sometimes all at once.

He was sublime. He was surly. He was a hero and a villain and a victim and a cheat.

He was, Bubba—he just was.

And now he’s not.

And it seems to me that that’s about the end of the story.

It’s a funny thing, being a fan. Sluggers come and sluggers go, but you remain the same. Sort of. The actual truth is that sluggers come and sluggers go, and you try your very hardest to believe that you do in fact remain the same—that You are somehow eternal amidst the coming and the going; that You are, yourself, anything other than a fleeting and fluxive Free Agent.

We’re fans, in part, because our icons cement our sense of being.

And when they go, there’s not much left of anything at all.

Barry Bonds turned on an inside fastball like nobody I ever saw. That sentence shouldn’t make me misty-eyed. It does, though—not for Barry, or even for myself, but rather for some thing, some idea, that is both Barry and me and more and less and Nothing.

Barry Bonds turned on an inside fastball like nobody I ever saw.

That’s not a statement, or a memory—it’s just a Moment.

And now it’s gone.

Which I guess means I’m only just saying, is all…