Bonds’ plaque fixes a hole in ‘Wall’
It has been six years since the Giants last inducted anyone onto their “Wall of Fame” outside AT&T Park.
Which makes sense. The more ex-players who went up, the more glaring the absence of one particularly important ex-Giant became.
That awkward hole finally will be filled Saturday afternoon, when Barry Bonds will take his place among Giants greats. The honor comes 10 years after his final — and 15th — season in a Giants uniform.
“We’ve all been busy the last 10 years,” said Giants President and CEO Larry Baer. “He didn’t retire, he didn’t get signed, he had legal issues to go through. Then it seemed he wanted to do something along the lines of what his father did and coach.
“Now he’s back. He has an association with the Giants. It felt right.”
Bonds, after working one season as a hitting coach in Miami, officially returned to the Giants in the spring to work as a special adviser to Baer. Bonds came to spring training, visited minor-league teams, met with sponsors — the usual types of honorary stuff.
Part of the agreement was that he would have a plaque on
the Wall of Fame, joining 48 others. The most recent inductees were Marvin Benard and Jason Schmidt in 2011.
“It’s just step one,” Baer said. “There will be other things down the line.”
Such as the possible retirement of Bonds’ No. 25. Or a bronze statue at a ballpark entrance. Baer said such things are being discussed but nothing has been definitively decided.
If the Giants recognize Bonds with a retired jersey and statue, he would be the first man who is not in Baseball’s Hall of Fame to be so honored. Bonds’ Hall of Fame voting numbers trended upward in his fifth year on the ballot. Still, his 53.8 percent of the vote fell well short of the 75 percent needed. He will be on the ballot for five more years.
All of this is part of the complicated legacy of Bonds, who holds the career and season home run records, whose career numbers are eye-popping, but whose accomplishments are severely tainted by his connection to steroids.
For several years, there was a question of whether the Giants would honor Bonds because he had a criminal record, having been convicted of obstruction of justice in the BALCO case. But in 2015, a federal appeals court overturned Bonds’ conviction.
“It’s important to Barry that he doesn’t have a criminal record, that he was cleared,” Baer said. “It was important to us.”
Putting Bonds’ name on the outside of the building he helped get built is a natural step for the organization. The pending ceremony has allowed Baer to take a trip down memory lane.
“It’s not just the ballpark, it was the reboot of the whole franchise,” Baer said.
When the ownership group was put together to 1992, to buy the team from Bob Lurie and prevent the Giants from moving to Florida, there were two top priorities: hire a manager and land a star free agent.
The first was relatively easy. Dusty Baker was the Giants’ hitting coach and a no-brainer hire as manager. The second was more complicated. Bonds was from the Bay Area, the son of a former All-Star outfielder, the godson of the team legend. Bonds also was the hottest free agent on the market that winter.
“We didn’t have the team yet, but we were talking to Barry,” Baer said. “If he committed to us, he had to say goodbye to other offers.”
The group reached a deal that if, for some reason, its purchase of the Giants fell through and Bonds ended up signing elsewhere for less than the $43.75 million he was offered, the group would make up the difference.
“We wanted to introduce him at the winter meetings in Louisville, but we had to cancel because we didn’t own the team yet,” Baer recalled.
The deal soon became official. Bonds was introduced at a news conference at Candlestick Park. A few days later, there was another news conference at the St. Francis Hotel and a rally at Union Square where Bonds and Baker were greeted like conquering heroes by a large crowd.
At his introduction, Bonds said, “I want a World Series ring so bad I can’t stand it. It’s just killing me, not having one. ... I feel my best chances of getting it are right here.”
He didn’t get one. Came close in 2002, but that was his only real shot.
But he did give the Giants a jump start from the dismal early ’90s, when the team seemed to have lost its way.
That seems familiar right now, as the Giants wallow in unfamiliar dismal territory.
“It’s been a nightmare,” Baer said of the current Giants. “We’ve had years when everything seemed to go right, so maybe we were due for one where things went wrong.”
Baer predicts the team will be active at the trade deadline. He likes what he’s seeing from some of the new faces. He said the team will not waste Buster Posey’s prime.
“This will not be a three- or four-year teardown,” Baer said. “I don’t think it needs to be. Maybe it will be more like 2009, to set the stage for what comes next.”
That was during the transition from the Bonds’ era to the championship era. Saturday will be a chance to go back in time.