Whether baseball fans like it or not, sometime within the next two weeks Barry Bonds will tie, and then break, Hank Aaron’s all-time Home Run record. For the most part, it seems that most baseball fans outside of San Francisco don’t like it. Bonds is widely seen, justifiably or not, as having obtained his records by virtue of using performance enhancing drugs and, deservedly or not, he has a reputation as a not very nice person.
Which is why it’s probably a good thing that this year’s All-Star Game is on friendly turf.
SAN FRANCISCO, July 9 — The host of the 2007 All-Star Game can be charming, thought-provoking and funny. He can also be aloof, irritable and a little bit mean.
Barry Bonds has served Major League Baseball in many capacities over the past two decades — as icon, villain and almost everything in between. This week, he is assuming an unlikely new role. He is the unofficial M.C. of baseball’s showcase event.
Bonds did not necessarily choose this position. By growing up in San Francisco, by playing for the San Francisco Giants, and by being four home runs away from the career home run record, it was basically handed to him.
“It’s my town,” Bonds said. “These are my friends. These are my people. I’m going to have a good time. I’m going to enjoy it.”
Bonds is not your typical greeter, back-slapping every visitor who walks through the door and then slinking into a side room while his guests enjoy the limelight. But he is performing his duties as graciously and hospitably as he can.
During a 50-minute news conference Monday — remarkable, considering that Bonds rarely even submits to five-minute news conferences — he tried to close the distance between himself and the baseball public that he so clearly has alienated.
Speaking directly to the fans who jeer him from the rafters, Bonds said: “You’re judging me on a third party when I’ve actually done nothing wrong. I’ve just gone to your stadium and tried to entertain you and tried to play my game the best I can.”
He added: “Why are you booing me? That would be my question. Why?”
There are two reasons Barry, one of which may actually be legitimate. First, there are some baseball fans that don’t like seeing long-standing records broken. They booed Roger Maris in `61 and Sosa and McGwire in the `90’s. Those people are stupid. The second reason, they boo you, though, is because, quite frankly, you deserve it.
