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To: Wharf Rat who wrote (33340)	4/17/2004 11:13:55 AM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 104181

A remarkably prescient article..he should hit #660 at home, and it should fly into the bay. BB aims to please. WR Bonds' 660th should be a 'home' run April 10, 2004 Barry Bonds has to do what he has to do. If he gets a fat pitch today or Sunday and drives it out of Petco Park, he'll tie Willie Mays in San Diego. He almost did it there Thursday night but got robbed at the center field fence. But I have a secret wish and I bet you have the same one. I hope he hits No. 660 at home. For a lot of reasons. First of all, there will be less resentment, less hostility from fans and players in San Diego, you know, all that junk about desecrating "our house" for a Giants celebration. The folks in San Diego aren't as bad as those yahoos in Houston who were absolutely apoplectic that the Giants might have any kind of ceremony, however brief and muted, at their place. Some players griped about compromising the "integrity" of the game. Get serious. Willie Mays was going to walk out of the dugout, go halfway to the plate and hand Bonds the Olympic torch from Salt Lake City. And then he was going to walk back. The Astros players wanted to make sure Mays didn't walk all the way to the plate. Somehow that would have been an in-your-face to all of Houston. Give me a break. This is Willie Mays we're talking about, the greatest living ballplayer, maybe the greatest ballplayer ever. And he would have been honoring Bonds and the game of baseball. So shame on the Astros. The Padres are cooler about this. If Bonds hits No. 660 in their new ballpark, the Padres will wait politely while Mays hands off the torch and hurries back to the dugout. But that's not the way it should happen -- not for Bonds, not for Mays, not for us. It should happen in San Francisco, and you know it. Although 660 is a big number in baseball, it's a bigger number in San Francisco. It is the biggest number in Giants history, and it's stood 31 years, and Mays owns that number, and Mays bridges the gap between the New York Giants and the San Francisco Giants. He is large enough to span a continent. OK, I know Mays actually hit 646 home runs as a Giant, but 660 is the magic number, the third-place number behind Aaron and the Babe, and no one is quibbling. Bonds didn't hit all his homers as a Giant, either. It would be important for the Bay Area to see Mays present the trophy to Bonds near or at home plate at SBC Park. We deserve that. And there's more. If you think about it, Bonds has reached the really significant milestones at SBC Park (then Pac Bell Park). He hit No. 600 there. He hit 71, 72 and 73 at home. In the short history of the park, he's given it, well, lots of history. No. 660 would even add to the lore. People in the Giants organization have been joking about Bonds for weeks, about his sense of drama. "Wait, you'll see, he'll do it at home," they whisper. If Bonds is the player we know him to be, he'll do it Monday, Opening Day against the Brewers under a bright San Francisco sky before a sold-out house. He'll seize the moment, launch a pitch into the Cove, and the place will go nuts, and they'll hear the cheers in South City and across the bay in Oakland. And the news will beam all over the country. And when Bonds rounds the bases and jumps on the plate and high-fives his teammates, then Mays will come out, Mays still handsome, Mays looking like an old lion. And maybe, if the conditions are just right, they'll allow Mays to walk all the way to home plate. pressdemocrat.com