SAN FRANCISCO - I should have figured this wasn't going to be any ordinary road trip. It started, after all, with Barry Bonds saying he was praying for me. Well, not just for me. Bonds is magnanimous enough to do it for all the ink-stained wretches who document his daily struggle to make the world a better place. It was Wednesday, May 3, and the scene was the visitors' clubhouse at Miller Park in Milwaukee. Bonds was being Bonds, alternately chastising writers for not knowing anything about baseball and then growing testy when the questions turned to steroids. "That's OK, though. I respect you anyway," he said. "I forgive you every day. I forgive all of y'all that write nasty things about me. And I pray for all of you all. I hope nothing ever happens to you. "That's the truth, that's from the bottom of my heart. One day you'll believe me." The gospel according to Bonds is weird enough. But a short time later it gets weirder as Bonds is hit in the head with a foul ball as he leans a bit too close to the batting cage. One press box wag suggests that it proves Newton's Law of Universal Gravitation, which states that the gravitational attraction between two objects is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them. Bonds plays, but his headache is just beginning. There are plenty of headaches in the press box, too, as writers who generally have no bigger things to ponder than a suicide squeeze start thinking about Newton's law. The next morning finds the surly slugger sacked out on a green leather couch in the clubhouse, oblivious to anything going on around him. It's on to Philadelphia, where the fans won't be nearly as sleepy. --- The assignment was simple. Pick up Bonds after he hits home run No. 712 and follow him until he breaks Babe Ruth's 714 milestone. A few games in Milwaukee, a weekend series in a very hitter friendly ballpark in Philadelphia, maybe a day or two in San Francisco. I figure the greatest slugger of his time shouldn't need much time to catch the Babe. I was wrong. Nearly two weeks later, the Giants are leaving their park by the water and the fans who don't care that some of the home runs Bonds hit may have been juiced. They play Monday night in Houston, where things don't figure to be nearly as friendly. Bonds' swing looks bad, his fielding looks even worse and he is stuck at No. 713 with no end in sight. He hasn't had a hit in his last 15 at-bats, In 12 games since hitting No. 712, Bonds has just four hits in 31 at-bats with one RBIs. And one gargantuan home run. It came Sunday night in Philadelphia, and Bonds hit it so far that even some of those who had been booing and mocking him at Citizens Bank Park stood to cheer. That didn't include the skinny guy in the T-shirt that read "Bonds Before 2000," or his buddy, dressed in an inflatable Incredible Hulk-like suit and a shirt that read "Bonds After 2000." Philly fans didn't lack for originality. They strung a large sign across the front of the left field stands to greet Bonds when he took the field in the final game of the homestand. "Babe Ruth did it on hot dogs and beer," it said. "Henry Aaron did it with class. How did you do it?" --- The ESPN show "Bonds on Bonds" is supposed to give viewers life of Bonds. But reality is better when there is no script. Bonds provides plenty of entertainment even when he's not hitting home runs. The kid who catches the home run ball asks Bonds to sign it and he refuses, but then agrees to pose for a picture with him. There's a catch, though: The kid has to sign - in this case a release to be on "Bonds on Bonds." Earlier, Bonds talked about how his teammates this year have helped make him a kinder, gentler person. Over the space of 12 games, though, Bonds never seems to be around his teammates. He's off by himself somewhere else when the team stretches, leaves games before the team bus does and in Saturday's comeback win against the Dodgers didn't celebrate on the field with the rest of the jubilant players. So, how does he know his teammates are behind him? "Because you guys ask the questions and I read their statements," Bonds says. "That's how I knew the support was there." Bonds is told that the players held a meeting in spring training and decided to stick by Bonds as a group. "I wasn't at them, so I don't know," he says. "Well, that's good. I'm glad." --- The game doesn't end in Philadelphia until late Sunday night, and the team has to fly home for a make up game the next night against the Astros. Bonds is given the night off because of the travel. He could have had it worse. While the team flies in a first class charter I book a last minute Southwest Airlines flight and end up stuck in a middle seat across the country to Los Angeles, followed by another flight to the Bay Area. Unlike Bonds, I don't get the night off. Bonds watch by the bay is a completely different animal than on the road. Here, there's plenty of love to go around and crowds pack the park in anxious anticipation that they will be the chosen ones who get to witness a slice of history. The series starts off with some promise, for both Bonds and an increasingly antsy writer. He doesn't play Monday, but on Tuesday against the Cubs he hits a line shot toward center field that would have gone out if Juan Pierre didn't leap at the wall and take the home run from him. Soon, though, the homestand settles into a predictable pattern. Bonds is struggling and pitchers are becoming increasingly confident about pitching to him. He looks at called strikes, lunges at offspeed pitches and generally looks every bit the 41-year-old he is. It gets uglier when the hated Dodgers get to town. The ballpark is sold out, but the fans who stood and cheered for every Bonds at bat earlier in the series are now more muted as if they realize No. 714 isn't going to come easy. Dodgers manager Grady Little isn't going to make it any easier. His team won't be pitching to Bonds if the game is in jeopardy. "We know there's not another Barry Bonds coming up after him," Little says. The first game is pushed back a half hour so Giants greats of the past can gather and celebrate Willie Mays' birthday with him. Bonds walks hand-in-hand out to the field with his godfather. The Say Hey kid would have loved to run the bases on a night like this. The So What slugger watches a ball drop near him in left field without making an effort for it, then is nearly doubled up after Jeff Kent drops a popup with Bonds already heading toward the dugout. Leaving early is nothing new for Bonds. The next day he's getting dressed in the clubhouse while his teammates score four runs in the bottom of the ninth and then get together for a raucous celebration. The crowd still shows its love. The next day, little kids join Giants when they take the field as part of a promotion and Bonds takes his time autographing a ball for the little girl who gets left field. That draws a big cheer from people in the bleachers, but there's not much for the season record crowd of 42,984 on Mother's Day to cheer for. Bonds makes two outs, draws two walks and leaves after eight innings with the Giants on their way to a loss. The first walk came on an intentional fourth ball after the count went to 3-0. That prompted the fans to hang another rubber chicken on the right field wall and some discussion about whether it qualified as an intentional walk. Someone suggests a quarter chicken could be hung, maybe a leg and a thigh. Bonds is done talking until he does something. Before the game, though, Giants manager Felipe Alou said he doesn't mind the whirlwind that swirls around Bonds. "I like this, man. I like a lot of people. I like controversy. I like storms," Alou said. "Any time we have hurricanes in Florida, I wish I were there. I'm not the eye, but I am the mouth of the storm. Look around and I'm the guy who has to answer a lot of this stuff." After the game, Alou isn't as charitable. "I've got to say the last at-bat he looked slow," Alou said. "I'm not going to talk anymore on Barry today." The homestand is over, but not before the Giants cash in with the largest three-game series crowd in park history. The Giants head for Houston, where history still looms. Maybe Bonds' luck will change with a change of scenery. Mine already has, with fellow columnist Jim Litke taking over the Bonds' watch in Houston. I'm going home. --- Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlbergap.org
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