Part Three
BARRY LAMAR BONDS
EIGHT
“I’m Keeping My Money”
B
ar-ry, Bar-ry, Bar-ry!”
The chant rolled across AT&T Park in San Francisco, packed with a sold-out crowd of 43,154 fans, as Giants slugger Barry Bonds, forty-three, stepped to the plate on August 7, 2007. His massive chest and arms filled out the white Giants uniform piped in navy and orange and emblazoned with the number 24, the same number Bonds’s father, Bobby, had worn when he played as a Giant. Hoping to catch a historic moment, thousands of flashes popped like strobe lights as the Washington Nationals’ pitcher Mike Bacsik threw his first pitch, a ball. Pitchers were often reluctant to throw a strike pitch to Bonds, fearful of the consequences.
Baseball fans had been riveted during the summer as Bonds moved within striking distance of the all-time home run record, held since 1974 by the legendary Hank Aaron. The previous Saturday, in San Diego, Bonds had hit home run number 755, tying Aaron. Now he was at home in San Francisco. Family, friends, and baseball officials had gathered in eager anticipation. On Monday night he had failed to get a hit. By the bottom of the fifth inning on Tuesday, Bonds had already notched two base hits against the twenty-nine-year-old Bacsik. Each pitch triggered an explosion of flashbulbs and more chants of “Barry, Barry.”
With no men on base, Bacsik worked the count to 3–2. On the next pitch, there was a gasp from the crowd as Bonds connected. It was a foul off the first-base line. Then the pitcher threw a high-risk fastball, right over the plate. Bonds responded with a full-powered swing, and there was a loud crack. Bonds dropped his bat and thrust both arms into the air. He could feel where the ball was going. He watched as it soared 435 feet into the right-center-field bleachers.
A rare smile spread across Bonds’s face and the crowd erupted. Fireworks were unleashed as Bonds briefly savored the moment, then made a triumphal tour of the bases, grinning broadly. As he touched home plate he again thrust both arms into the air in what he said was a tribute to his late father. His seventeen-year-old son, Nikolai, was the first to reach him as family and teammates rushed onto the field to hug him. The game came to a halt.
An announcer asked everyone to turn their attention to the stadium’s huge video screen. Hank Aaron, now seventy-three, appeared to offer a gracious tribute: “It is a great accomplishment, which required skill, longevity, and determination. Throughout the past century, the home run has held a special place in baseball and I have been privileged to hold this record for thirty-three of those years. I move over now and offer my best wishes to Barry and his family on this historic achievement. My hope today, as it was on that April evening in 1974, is that the achievement of this record will inspire others to chase their own dreams.”
Bonds’s godfather, seventy-six-year-old former Giants teammate Willie Mays, considered by many to be the greatest player ever, joined Bonds on the field as Bonds took the microphone. “Thank you very much. I got to thank all of you. All the fans here in San Francisco, road and home, it’s been fantastic. . . . I got to thank my family. My mother, my wife, Liz, my kids Nikolai, Shikari, and Aisha. I’m glad I did it before you guys went to school. Thanks for being here. I got to thank the Washington Nationals for your support. Thank you for understanding this day. It means a lot to me. My dad . . .” Here he choked up, fighting back tears. “Thank you . . . for everything . . . thank you.”
After the game resumed, no one cared that the Giants went on to lose. Baseball commissioner Bud Selig called to congratulate Bonds. The Giants hosted a press conference, and Bonds changed into a black cap and T-shirt, both emblazoned with the number 756. He was flanked by his wife, children, and sister, whom he described as “my backbone–we’re a close-knit family.”
Bonds said he was especially moved by a call on Sunday from his mother, after he tied Aaron’s record, saying she was just glad she was alive to witness the moment of her son’s triumph. “Truthfully, my dad would have said, ‘What the hell took you so long?’ ” Bonds said. “My dad was never satisfied with anything.” By contrast, he said his mother had always supported and encouraged him, driving him to practice and to school, working at concession stands when he was a kid. “My mother was there when my dad was never there,” he said.
Then a reporter mentioned that despite his achievement, some people thought the new record was “tainted.” Bonds’s gaze immediately darkened. “You’ve heard that word,” the reporter continued. “Do you think this record is tainted?”
“This record is not tainted at all,” Bonds said, his voice taut. “At all. Period.” His gaze defiantly swept the room of reporters. “You guys can say whatever you want.”
B
arry Bonds was born in 1964 into baseball royalty. His father, Bobby, signed with the Giants that year, and went on to notch a string of records: the first player to join the “30/30 club” (thirty home runs and thirty stolen bases in one season), the second player to reach a career total of 300 home runs and 300 stolen bases, and league records for lead-off home runs. He played in three All-Star games and was most valuable player in 1973. As a Giant, Bonds was especially close to Willie Mays, and many anointed Bobby as the heir to Mays’s mantle. Bobby often moved to center field when Mays wasn’t playing, and after Mays retired, Bobby got the position. Mays, in turn, doted on Barry, who often came with his father to Candlestick Park wearing a child-size Giants uniform. Mays became Barry’s godfather.
But Bobby Bonds’s life and career were far more troubled than the statistics and expectations implied. He was sometimes moody and withdrawn, and was twice arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol. He never lived up to the tremendous promise he showed early in his career, let alone to the Mays legacy, and in 1974 the Giants traded him to the Yankees, the first of a succession of trades that took him to six more teams in as many years. He retired from Major League Baseball in 1974, when Barry was ten, his baseball hopes focused on his sons.
Bobby Bonds was rarely at home with his family in Bay Area suburb San Carlos during baseball season, especially after he was traded to the Yankees (the family never moved east with him). Barry Bonds later alleged his father was abusive to him, his mother, and his siblings, and that his father’s drinking embarrassed him. Even as Bonds publicly lavished praise on his father’s coaching and influence, he lamented his frequent absences and impossible demands.
Barry was obviously a natural athlete, excelling at sports, especially baseball, at mostly white Junipero Serra High School in San Mateo. “Everything was easy for me, all sports, when I was a kid,” Bonds told
Playboy
in 1993. “I’d work half as hard as other kids did and I was better. Why work when I had so much ability?” Bonds was tall, lithe, and slender, with remarkable timing and coordination. The Giants drafted Barry as soon as he graduated from high school; instead he attended Arizona State, where he was an outstanding player for the Sun Rays. He was drafted by the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1985 after his junior year and never graduated.
The combination of such natural talent and a celebrity father meant Barry Bonds was never just another teammate, giving him a privileged status he alternately embraced and resented. At Arizona State, he showed up driving a new black Pontiac Trans Am muscle car, which he parked in the coach’s reserved parking space. His coach, Jim Brock, described his star player in a
Sports Illustrated
interview as “rude, inconsiderate and self-centered,” with an inability to make friends. Bonds violated curfew and was suspended; teammates initially voted not to let him return, even though he was easily their most talented player.
Bonds made his first major-league appearance in center field for the Pirates in May 1986. He was just twenty-two. His behavior continued to reflect a mix of defiance and entitlement. In one altercation, captured on a widely circulated video, Bonds yelled, “I’ll make my own rules here,” and told revered former Pirate Bill Virdon, the outfield coach, “Nobody’s going to tell me what to do.” Though he was twice named National League MVP, Pittsburgh fans and the sports press never warmed to him. He was often booed. The local press awarded him its “MDP”–Most Despised Pirate–award.
After a series of salary disputes, the Pirates offered Bonds a five-year, $25 million contract in 1992, which he rejected. Bonds had obvious star appeal for San Francisco, which promptly signed him to a six-year, $43.75 million contract to play left field. During his first season as a Giant, Bonds hit 46 home runs and captured another MVP award.
K
imberly Bell was twenty-four, working as a graphic artist at Adobe Systems and as a part-time model when she met Barry Bonds in the players’ parking lot outside the ballpark in 1994. She and her friend Kathy Hoskins had just watched the Giants beat the Montreal Expos, and afterward Hoskins maneuvered her car into the players’ parking lot, hoping to meet some of the ballplayers.
Kathy’s brother Steve was Barry Bonds’s best friend, and the Hoskins and Bonds families had been close since childhood. Kathy’s father, Bob Hoskins, a defensive tackle for the 49ers, and Bobby Bonds were close friends. The families were neighbors in San Carlos, and after Hoskins died at age thirty-four, Bobby became a surrogate father for the Hoskins children. After Bonds returned to the Bay Area from Pittsburgh, he and Steve resumed their childhood friendship and became all but inseparable. Hoskins was part of his entourage at the stadium and in the clubhouse, served as something of a public relations adviser as well as business manager for Bonds-themed memorabilia and other products, and was Bonds’s overall right-hand man. Kathy sometimes worked for Bonds as a personal shopper.
Bonds came over to Hoskins’s car and was immediately smitten by Bell. “I want to know that girl,” he said to Hoskins, who invited both to a barbecue in San Carlos the next day. Bonds took Bell for a ride in his new Porsche, then persuaded her to spend the night with him.
At thirty, Bonds was already the Giants’ star center fielder. He was also married. He’d eloped to Las Vegas and married Susann (Sun) Branco, a Swedish bartender he’d met at a Montreal nightclub in 1987. The couple had a son, Nikolai, and daughter, Shikari. But by the time he met Bell, they were separated and embroiled in a bitter fight over the prenuptial agreement Bonds had Branco sign. Bonds also felt their interracial marriage had attracted criticism and damaged his standing in the African American community. They divorced in December 1994 and at Bonds’s behest the Catholic Church annulled the marriage.
Bonds and Bell were soon steady companions, though they never lived together; Bonds kept his condo in exclusive Redwood Shores, while Bell had a small apartment in Mountain View. After his contentious divorce, Bonds insisted he never wanted to be married again, and Bell said she wanted to pursue her various career possibilities. But they typically spent two or three nights a week together when Bonds was in town. He had a key to her apartment and came and went freely. She often traveled with him on road trips, staying in an adjacent room sometimes booked by the Giants organization. He introduced her to his parents, his children, his agents, his teammates. He called her frequently, even obsessively, at work and at home. She dutifully kept all the recorded messages, which, at least at first, were filled with endearments as well as anxiety: “Where are you? And who are you with? I have called you all night on your cell and home.”
Bell was in love with Bonds, and she made few demands, something she felt strengthened their relationship. He didn’t feel pressured or tied down. Still, there were benefits besides the travel and the limelight when she was with him. He (or his friend Steve Hoskins) sometimes gave her envelopes containing thousands of dollars in cash; he bought her a new Toyota SUV when her car broke down; he paid for her breast augmentation surgery. Though he never claimed the relationship was exclusive, it nonetheless came as a shock to Bell when Bonds told her, in 1997, that a woman had moved into his apartment with him.
Despite his claims to Bell that he never wanted to marry again, the following year Bonds told her he was getting married. As Bell recalled the conversation, she asked, “Are you going to have children with her?”
“Well, she’s gonna be my wife. I guess I have to let her have one,” he’d replied.
Bonds and Liz Watson were wed in a lavish ceremony at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in San Francisco attended by 240 guests. Steve Hoskins was his best man. Bonds serenaded the bride, who was quiet, attractive, and unlike his previous wife or Bell, African American. A daughter, Aisha, was born in February 1999.
But Bonds showed the same selective approach to the conventions of marriage that he did the rules of his various teams. He and Bell were together the day before the wedding. The day he returned from his honeymoon, he showed up at Bell’s apartment and said he didn’t see why anything about their relationship had to change. But inevitably, the relationship did change. Bonds and Bell could no longer date publicly, nor could she travel openly with him on Giants trips (though she still did accompany him to many cities). During spring training in Arizona, Bonds rented a luxurious house in Scottsdale. Bell got to spend a week there with him, but had to leave when his wife and children arrived. But later, in 2001, Bonds offered to buy Bell a house of her own, and began funneling cash from the memorabilia business for a down payment, using Hoskins as a conduit.