Friday, May 12, 2006

Harvey Araton: As Bonds Chases Ruth, Pujols Lurks

HARVEY ARATON
The New York Times
Published: May 12, 2006

The celebration remained on hold in San Francisco yesterday, but the grand moment of national ambiguity is going to occur one of these coming and largely anticlimactic nights. Barry Bonds will hit No. 714, match Babe Ruth in career home runs, then set his sights on Hank Aaron, on another slice of cherished Americana.

A more compelling, and confusing, chase could also star Bonds later this season, as the hunted.
Maybe you've heard that only one player in major league history — someone named Cy Williams in 1923 — has ever reached 18 home runs faster than the Cardinals' Albert Pujols did Wednesday, in 35 games. In St. Louis, The Post-Dispatch has already begun charting his progress relative to Bonds (73 home runs in 2001) and Mark McGwire (70 in 1998).

In the Red Sox' clubhouse yesterday at Yankee Stadium, May 11 wasn't too early for David Ortiz to envision his pal Pujols creating more late-summer hysteria, just when baseball was supposed to be drug testing its way out of the 60's and 70's, into a more believable 21st century.
"There is no ceiling for this guy," Ortiz said, taking a moment to acknowledge the world outside the Yankees-Red Sox cocoon, to extol the piping-hot Pujols, his Dominican teammate this spring in the World Baseball Classic. "I guarantee you he's going to have career numbers this year. I wouldn't be surprised if he hit 60 home runs."

To which a former Pujols teammate, Red Sox reliever Julián Tavárez, added: "All this guy knows is hitting, watching himself on DVD's. I wouldn't be surprised if he hit 70."

Pujols, Jim Thome or anyone else will not have to hit 74 home runs to color the black-and-white steroid argument a vague shade of gray. Sixty-five would surely be enough to allow Bonds, the sultan of smug, to look his critics in the eye and ask if they are still so certain that his late-in-baseball-life evolution was performance enhanced.

Count Ortiz among those who believe that Bonds — or as he calls him, "My man, Barry" — cannot be dismissed as a miracle of science.

"I don't believe in that, when people say these guys hit all those home runs just because of the steroids," Ortiz said. "Look at Albert. He's strong. He's got a great swing. Think about how many good swings he's going to get unless they start walking him. In these ballparks now, you can hit 60 home runs if you are strong and have a good swing."

It also wouldn't hurt to be taking human growth hormone, or some other substance that the state-of-the-art laboratories haven't created a test for. That's no accusation, just an acknowledgment of the times. Try Googling "Pujols and steroids" and see for yourself how rampant skepticism runs in the bloggers' universe, even for a player who has hit more than 40 homers the past three seasons.

Reflexive cynicism, presumption of guilt until proven innocent, is no doubt unfair to Pujols or any individual never linked to a steroid scandal, but that is what baseball's decade-plus of abject denial as an industry seems to have earned it. That is what the Balco case and the Congressional hearings and the literary revelations have wrought.

Suspicions aren't going away anytime soon, any more than Bonds is.

Remember those wishful notions during spring training that the ailing Bonds might call it a career, spare himself the overwhelming scrutiny and baseball the ongoing examination of its 1990's ethos? How laughable they seem now, given the love-ins by the bay, the pity-me programming on ESPN, the predictable celebrity attachment cheerleading by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, among others.

If ever there was an athlete born to put up with all of this, to be the quintessential American antihero, it was Barry Bonds. Barring a federal indictment for perjury or income-tax evasion, you get the feeling that Bonds will not quit without Aaron's record if only to spite those who have deemed him unworthy. If he can't play the field every day, or the Giants don't want him next year at the $18 million he is costing them now, Bonds will shop himself to the highest bidder, go to the American League to be a designated hitter.

And who will be the first to dare George Steinbrenner to unite Bonds with Jason Giambi and Gary Sheffield for a Yankees extravaganza, Balco on Broadway? Imagine the possibilities. Imagine how well Bonds could teach Alex Rodriguez to better deal with expectations and critics, to never give in.

Such sensitivity, the inability to put failure behind him, has also plagued Albert Pujols early in his career, Ortiz said.

"He's the kind of guy who worries a lot," Ortiz said. "He knows how good he is, but not all the time. He's always thought that he needs to do something every day. When we were together during the Classic, I told him that if you have 81 good games and 81 bad ones, you can still have a great season. He knew that already, but sometimes you feel good when someone reminds you."

Pujols doesn't need to be told he won't stay on pace to hit more than 81 homers. He doesn't have to. Sixty-five home runs would open a whole new dialogue in the contentious home run debate. From Bonds's side, being the hunted might be the best marketing he could ask for.

E-mail: hjaraton@nytimes.com

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