Barry Bonds: A Giants Fan Looks Back

The following post was submitted by Matt Schiavenza, a Giants fan living in Kunming, China.

The recent indictment of Barry Bonds for perjury and obstruction of justice seemed to provoke two clear reactions among the nation’s baseball fans: glee and sadness. For a taste of the former, check out this piece by long-time Bonds critic Tom Verducci on SI.com. More thoughtful pundits, such as ESPN’s venerable Peter Gammons, noted sadly how such a fine career will forever be tainted by the fallout of steroid use.

That Bonds is unpopular around the country is old news. Even before the steroid allegations began, Bonds was infamous for his surly, arrogant demeanor both on and off the field. Opposing fans hated his casual stroll on home runs, or his sometimes lackadaisical approach on the bases. Critics faulted the Giants for giving their star so much leeway, allowing an entourage to accompany him everywhere and permitting Bonds to put a comfortable chair in front of his spread of lockers. In baseball, the ultimate team sport, Bonds stood apart: year after year he refused to be included in the Giants’ team photographs and even requested late in his career not to be put into a game as a pinch hitter. To journalists, Bonds was surly and abrupt when he deigned to speak with them at all.

After the revelation that Bonds took steroids became national news, fans around the league transferred some of their animus toward Bonds to that of his team, the San Francisco Giants. Rather than cutting ties with the tainted player, the Giants kept Bonds employed and insisted on celebrating his on-field accomplishments. Giants fans cheering every Bonds home run were derisively referred to as “brainwashed” in the national media, as if somehow the famous San Francisco fog somehow obscured our ability to see the truth. The Giants’ recent slide into mediocrity was viewed as comeuppance by many fans for failing to reign in our drug-laden superstar.

To risk stating the obvious, of course Giants fans had a different perception of Bonds. While the nation only saw his magnificent water-bound home runs, we saw the slugger as the epitome of the complete baseball player, an almost underappreciated force despite his huge national exposure. Until the past few seasons, Bonds was perhaps the greatest defensive left fielder in major league history. No player was better at playing balls off the left field fence and holding players to a single. Bonds’ arm was never strong, but always accurate. In 2004, during a tie game against the Atlanta Braves, I saw Bonds gun home the go-ahead run in the top of the 9^th inning and then hit a game-winning home run on the first pitch of his next at-bat. For us, we were used to such heroics, but only in retrospect have we appreciated how Bonds could almost single-handedly win a baseball game.

Bonds was also, for much of his career, a tremendous baserunner. He was rarely thrown out on the basepaths and always enjoyed high stolen base success rates. Unlike several other players lauded for their hustle, Bonds never injured himself with an ill-advised slide. In fact, he was remarkably healthy during the duration of his time in San Francisco.

Even his reputation as a bad teammate could be called into question. Several of Bonds’ former teammates, such as Marquis Grissom, credited him with helping their approaches at the plate. One teammate of Bonds’ (I forget who) recounted how he sat next to the star in the dugout and listened with astonishment as Barry accurately predicted every single pitch. Bonds was a complete hitter with a masterful eye. He rarely swung at bad pitches and could always work a walk. Bonds was dangerous against lefties and righties, groundball and flyball pitchers, junkballers and fastballers. He would quickly remedy any weakness in his approach at the plate and thus was rarely vulnerable to extended slumps.

Of course, the big question surrounding Bonds is how much his use of steroids affected his performance on the field. These questions are impossible to quantify, yet that hasn’t stopped several nationally known sportswriters from trying. One can certainly assume that Bonds would not have hit as many home runs without chemical assistance, and his body likely recovered much faster from the ravages afflicting any aging ballplayer.

Yet even the most ardent Bonds hater would have to admit that he was far from the only player on the juice. Jose Canseco, an unapologetic steroid user, estimated that nearly half of his teammates during his career used performance enhancing drugs. Baseball’s history is littered with tales of cheating, from spitballs to greenies and sign stealing and game fixing. For professional ballplayers, the incentives have long been there. Bonds was hardly the only one to cave into the pressure, but as the game’s highest-profile user he was poised to take the greatest fall.

As a diehard Giants fan, I’m more than a little saddened by the events that have transpired. Bonds is no innocent victim, and in the end he was felled by the arrogance that has defined his whole career. But, for a moment, consider the effect Bonds had on both the Giants and the city of San Francisco. Before Bonds arrived, in 1992, the Giants were a bad team in a bad stadium all but certain to move to Tampa Bay. Without Bonds, the Giants would never have engendered the necessary support to build beautiful AT&T Park. Without Bonds, the Giants never would have strung together eight consecutive winning seasons or come six outs from winning the World Series. Bonds helped restore pride in an organization that had long taken a back seat to its hated rival, the Los Angeles Dodgers. For several years as his soaring home runs splashed into McCovey Cove, the Giants were the biggest game in town, a perennial winner only a Rally Monkey could prevent from capturing the World Series. And while it has ended badly, and the Giants are back to their former studied mediocrity, I hope you can understand why fans like myself do not feel guilty for indulging in fifteen years of wonderful baseball memories.