An excerpt from Tom Verducci's column on SI.com today

    So this is how the great chase of Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron plays out, wholly without grace. An event to be mocked. A celebration of the absurd rather than of sporting achievement. An embarrassment for baseball and a burden for the Giants. Syringes on the field. Double entendres in the stands. Investigators wading into the muck. The class act Vin Scully telling the Los Angeles Times he hopes he's not unlucky enough to have to call home run number 756.

    Consider what happened Monday evening in San Diego. In his first game since being catalogued by the book Game of Shadows as a serial steroid user and effectively being placed under investigation by the office of the commissioner, Barry Bonds was Tonya Harding. A punch line. An object of ridicule. His teammate Omar Vizquel said that Bonds was heckled by children, for goodness sake, during batting practice.

    "Today it was kind of bad,'' Vizquel said.

    Oh, that was just a start. Fans littered the stands with placards that questioned everything about Bonds, from the legitimacy of his records to the size of his head and genitalia. A reporter asked Bonds quite seriously if the syringe thrown near him on the field had a needle. Giants staffers were in full panic mode trying to tamp down the brush fire of questions to players about all things Bonds, and a weariness had already settled over the clubhouse about this elephant in the room that will dominate their season.

    "And this is only Day One," one Giant said, shaking his head.

    And this was only San Diego, where the sun-dappled folks eating their fish tacos in flip-flops don't know what it's like to work up a really good anger. Holy trenbolone, if San Diego is hostile, what is Los Angeles going to be like? Philadelphia? Chicago? New York? Now that the first draft of the rules of engagement have been written, what happens when the seasoned hecklers get their turn?

    Here's just a sampling of San Diego's messages to Bonds: "Barr-Roids," "Bonds 1st in Hall of Shame," "Cheaters Never Prosper,'' "No Confess, No Hall of Fame," "Bonds Greatest Cheater of the Era," "Huge Head, Tiny Bat, Tiny Balls," and, simply yet profoundly, "*''. And that was before someone chucked the large syringe onto the field. Bonds picked it up with his glove. No, he didn't keep it. He flipped it into a camera well near the dugout.

    The Giants cannot be a normal baseball team. Bonds, the person and the ongoing news story, is bigger than the team, which you would have understood if you were in the San Francisco clubhouse after the 6-1 Opening Day loss to San Diego. Immediately after the game, as Bonds fetched an ice pack for his right knee, the airspace around his locker was staked out very seriously by a p.r. flak vainly trying to affect a bodyguard's stance, Bonds' personal trainer (non-incarcerated version, who, wink-wink, is employed by the Giants), Bonds' clubhouse lackey, Bonds' personal videographer and about 15 reporters who cared not a whit about what manager Felipe Alou had to say about how the game was lost.

    Bonds took some questions, though. With practiced detachment, his answers were devoid of any real thought.


Barry Bonds must go. It will only get worse.

We all wear a green carnation.