Barry

Well, it's official: The San Francisco Giants are American sport's most spineless organization. They went ahead and brought back the biggest cancer in recent baseball history to sit in or hobble around play left field. d

Did anyone expect anything else? Of course not. Giants owner Peter Magowan is, as SF Chronicle columnist Ray Ratto told us, Barry's ATM and Barry's leather recliner. It's disappointing, it's frustrating -- and it's the only thing that could possibly have happened one way or the other.

Seriously. Look at the hard-on the franchise has for BB, who would be challenged to crack the lineup in an average AL East team (who would you rather have as DH -- BB or David Ortiz?).
It's a chubby the size of the Bay Bridge, one rivaled only by the fawning Giants fans. I was there when he hit 715 out in May, and you would have thought it was the Second Coming. At a 75 percent off sale. With naked waitresses. Or something. You get the idea. The place went completely ape.
Within seconds, the club unfurled these giant banners in the outfield (replete with silhouettes of The Man himself, which you can see to the right), and within minutes, were hawking via the Jumbotron "Official Barry Bonds 715 packages -- yours for $32.99." Sickening.
I coped by hiding my head in my hands or my beer cup for the rest of the afternoon, and then exacted my revenge in August by cheering heartily when Bonds got thrown out of the game mid at-bat in the ninth inning.
Bonds was, at a time, one of the top 10 baseball players of all time. But he has also been, from day one, a capital a-hole. That's been chronicled time and again. Half the people I've met on the West Coast have some terrible story of Bonds being a jerk to kids, kicking puppies or beating up nuns or whatever. And he used steroids -- but honestly, I could care less about that. That's the beauty of it.

The only thing keeping Bonds on the field (other than $16,000,000 to nap in the clubhouse, limp around left and keep the Bay Area tides in check with the gravitational pull of his giant swollen head) is Hank Aaron's record. He just HAS to have it -- and he very well might. But it'll be hollow -- pure masturbation. Everywhere he goes for the rest of his life, he won't be Mr. Home Run Record. He'll be Mr. Jerk-ass Cheater -- and it'll tear him apart. Karma's a bitch.