Bonds' Tired Talk Tiring
by Gene Collier
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
sonal snake pit called Pittsburgh beginning tomorrow.
Such is the quotidian myopia that envelopes the great Barry Bonds, who brings with him to this week's appointments with the Pirates at PNC Park no particular reflection or affection for an organization that could not clear space for his ballooning financial portfolio nearly 12 years ago.
What he brings instead, in addition to voluminous credentials for inclusion in the game's pantheon of immortals, is plain old fatigue.
Barry's tired, and so tired of saying he's tired that now he has got his manager saying it and the club's trainer saying it, and even the owner of the San Francisco Giants, Peter Magowan, saying it loud enough to make you think Bonds might finish this singular career in the American League. Ah yes, the AL, where the game just isn't so damn tiring. The league has the designated hitter, who is mostly a designated sitter.
In case you've tuned Bonds out -- and given almost any random sampling of his reluctant public utterances, you're better off for it -- the game's incomparable slugger first mentioned in early May that he was being walked so often that he was growing tired of standing all the time.
No, seriously.
And here it is August. The man's gotta be dead on his feet.
"Walking is harder than hitting because you're on your feet all day," he told MLB.com. "I never sit down. I'd go on the bases, stand up, go to get my glove and stand out there, except for a few minutes, go and hit, grab my glove, run a base, score, whatever, grab my glove, go out there.
"That's hard. That's not easy. Let somebody do that and see how it feels."
Now while you look for the phone number for Amnesty International, I'll just start by pointing out that there are plenty of people who'll stand for the whole game tomorrow night, many of them stadium ushers, some of whom were doing the same thing in Forbes Field before Bonds was born.
Waitresses and bartenders, porters and bell captains, umpires, toll takers, bricklayers, soldiers, sailors, butchers, bakers, and former Candlestick Park ticket takers, pretty much remain on their feet a lot longer than Bonds, even when he walks four times.
And somehow, intelligent people talk as if this goofy issue of keeping Bonds vertical is a looming crisis.
"I want him to [finish his career] here, but I don't have to play left field and have to stand there and never sit down," Magowan has said for the record. "I don't get walked and have to be standing on first base all the time. I could see how he might make life a lot easier on himself as an American League player."
This came up because if Magowan wants to keep Bonds around after 2006, the summer in which he will likely break Hank Aaron's all-time home run record, he might have to give him a little salary bump beyond what's called for his current contract. It has two more seasons to run at about $18 million per year.
But that's not today's issue. Today's issue is the hot inconvenience for a 40-year-old man to have to remain upright for literally minutes at a time, especially when the man is only earning about $111,000 per game? If you prefer the hourly rate, that's a little more than $37,000 an hour, which I'm still guessing makes what your own compensation look like a booger, no?
If Magowan is trying to suggest to other National League owners that the insane number of walks Bonds is being issued will drive him out of the league at the moment when he's most marketable, that's worth considering. But if we're expected to accept this poor-Barry's-so-tired thing on its face, I mean, take it somewhere else.
How about a chair? Would anyone mind, do you think, if Barry just took a lawn chair out to left with him? (I'm sorry -- had someone bring him one). Is there a rule against it? Judging from what's left of Barry's defensive prowess, he would get just as good a jump on the ball from the chair as he's getting from a standing start.
There's another solution. It's called retirement. Maybe it's time Barry sat down behind a desk, freed from the rigors of keeping his perfectly lethal swing intact. That way maybe he'll have time to think about what he's saying from time to time. Maybe then, there will be no more pronouncements about how he could never play in Boston because it's a racist town and that he was more interested in surpassing Babe Ruth's records than Hank Aaron's and how they'll never name a street or a tunnel after him because "they don't build stuff for blacks."
"I live in the real world, brother," he told the Boston Globe's Gordon Edes this summer. "That's all. I do the best I can in the real world. I ain't mad at it, but it's still the real world."
Bonds grew up in major-league clubhouses, grew into a regal athleticism, and will grow old amid the limitless privileges of astounding wealth and worldwide fame. He's never been near the real world, and it's just as well, because it can be very, very tiring.
by Gene Collier
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
sonal snake pit called Pittsburgh beginning tomorrow.
Such is the quotidian myopia that envelopes the great Barry Bonds, who brings with him to this week's appointments with the Pirates at PNC Park no particular reflection or affection for an organization that could not clear space for his ballooning financial portfolio nearly 12 years ago.
What he brings instead, in addition to voluminous credentials for inclusion in the game's pantheon of immortals, is plain old fatigue.
Barry's tired, and so tired of saying he's tired that now he has got his manager saying it and the club's trainer saying it, and even the owner of the San Francisco Giants, Peter Magowan, saying it loud enough to make you think Bonds might finish this singular career in the American League. Ah yes, the AL, where the game just isn't so damn tiring. The league has the designated hitter, who is mostly a designated sitter.
In case you've tuned Bonds out -- and given almost any random sampling of his reluctant public utterances, you're better off for it -- the game's incomparable slugger first mentioned in early May that he was being walked so often that he was growing tired of standing all the time.
No, seriously.
And here it is August. The man's gotta be dead on his feet.
"Walking is harder than hitting because you're on your feet all day," he told MLB.com. "I never sit down. I'd go on the bases, stand up, go to get my glove and stand out there, except for a few minutes, go and hit, grab my glove, run a base, score, whatever, grab my glove, go out there.
"That's hard. That's not easy. Let somebody do that and see how it feels."
Now while you look for the phone number for Amnesty International, I'll just start by pointing out that there are plenty of people who'll stand for the whole game tomorrow night, many of them stadium ushers, some of whom were doing the same thing in Forbes Field before Bonds was born.
Waitresses and bartenders, porters and bell captains, umpires, toll takers, bricklayers, soldiers, sailors, butchers, bakers, and former Candlestick Park ticket takers, pretty much remain on their feet a lot longer than Bonds, even when he walks four times.
And somehow, intelligent people talk as if this goofy issue of keeping Bonds vertical is a looming crisis.
"I want him to [finish his career] here, but I don't have to play left field and have to stand there and never sit down," Magowan has said for the record. "I don't get walked and have to be standing on first base all the time. I could see how he might make life a lot easier on himself as an American League player."
This came up because if Magowan wants to keep Bonds around after 2006, the summer in which he will likely break Hank Aaron's all-time home run record, he might have to give him a little salary bump beyond what's called for his current contract. It has two more seasons to run at about $18 million per year.
But that's not today's issue. Today's issue is the hot inconvenience for a 40-year-old man to have to remain upright for literally minutes at a time, especially when the man is only earning about $111,000 per game? If you prefer the hourly rate, that's a little more than $37,000 an hour, which I'm still guessing makes what your own compensation look like a booger, no?
If Magowan is trying to suggest to other National League owners that the insane number of walks Bonds is being issued will drive him out of the league at the moment when he's most marketable, that's worth considering. But if we're expected to accept this poor-Barry's-so-tired thing on its face, I mean, take it somewhere else.
How about a chair? Would anyone mind, do you think, if Barry just took a lawn chair out to left with him? (I'm sorry -- had someone bring him one). Is there a rule against it? Judging from what's left of Barry's defensive prowess, he would get just as good a jump on the ball from the chair as he's getting from a standing start.
There's another solution. It's called retirement. Maybe it's time Barry sat down behind a desk, freed from the rigors of keeping his perfectly lethal swing intact. That way maybe he'll have time to think about what he's saying from time to time. Maybe then, there will be no more pronouncements about how he could never play in Boston because it's a racist town and that he was more interested in surpassing Babe Ruth's records than Hank Aaron's and how they'll never name a street or a tunnel after him because "they don't build stuff for blacks."
"I live in the real world, brother," he told the Boston Globe's Gordon Edes this summer. "That's all. I do the best I can in the real world. I ain't mad at it, but it's still the real world."
Bonds grew up in major-league clubhouses, grew into a regal athleticism, and will grow old amid the limitless privileges of astounding wealth and worldwide fame. He's never been near the real world, and it's just as well, because it can be very, very tiring.
