Starting immediately:
Barry Bonds will begin his new Giants job on Wednesday.
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Barry Bonds is finally coming home.
The Giants on Tuesday made a long-anticipated announcement that they have hired baseball’s all-time home run leader as a special assistant to Chief Executive Officer Larry Baer.
Bonds will arrive in camp Wednesday to work with players over the final six days. During the season, he will serve as a team ambassador, alongside other Giants greats of the past, then roll up his sleeves and travel to the minors to teach prospects how to hit.
Moreover, as part of the agreement between Bonds and the club, he finally will be added to the Wall of Fame on the King Street side of AT&T Park in a ceremony this season, with the date to
be determined.
The Giants also plan to retire Bonds’ No. 25, regardless of whether he is elected to the Hall of Fame, the club’s historical threshold for that honor.
“That’s one of the things on the table,” Baer said by phone. “We’ve discussed it. It’s on the table for coming attractions.”
Bonds and the Giants have not discussed a statue outside the ballpark, however.
Bonds said in a statement that he was excited to join the Giants in an official capacity.
“San Francisco has always been my home and the Giants will always be my family,” Bonds said. “I look forward to spending time with the team, young players in the system as well as the Bay Area community.”
This agreement comes 10 seasons after Bonds played his final game. His penultimate contract with the Giants included a 10-year personal-services contract to be honored after his retirement, but Baer said the arrangement announced Tuesday is new.
It also is long overdue, but like everything involving Bonds, the process was complicated.
Bonds still wanted to play in 2008 and beyond and did not officially retire. The Giants also were reluctant to hand him an role while he faced federal perjury and obstruction of justice charges. His lone conviction was overturned on appeal in 2015.
Bonds then wanted to be a major-league hitting coach, which the Giants declined to offer because they had one in Hensley Meulens. So Bonds became the Marlins’ hitting coach last season. He lasted one year before he was let go.
All of which led Bonds back to San Francisco.
“Sometimes it’s not a straight line,” Baer said. “It takes a while or it’s a bit circuitous. But I think it’s the right outcome. It seemed the time was right for both sides.”
Bonds will attend team functions such as the Play Ball Lunch and take part in ballpark ceremonies. He might spend some time with the big club, like other former Giants such as Will Clark, but his main focus will be instructing prospects.
“It’s something he’s interested in and something we’re interested in, conveying his knowledge of hitting,” Baer said. “I don’t think anyone would argue with the fact that he’s a hitting genius.”
Bonds joins his godfather, Willie Mays, Willie McCovey, Orlando Cepeda and others as Giants ambassadors. Mays has been at Giants camp but will leave Wednesday morning and not be there when Bonds arrives.
Baer would not divulge the length of Bonds’ contract but said, “We don’t see this as a one-year relationship. We see this as we do with our Hall of Famers, that he’ll be around for quite a while.”