Wiping Barry Bonds from AT&T: Peter Magowan’s and MLB’s Master Plan

By: D.K. Wilson

In a move that is as crass as it is reprehensible, San Francisco Giants owner Peter Magowan removed any sign of Barry Bonds’ presence at SBC bought by Pac Bell, merged with AT&T Park.

Not even a “756″ sign remains.

The move also illustrates the worth of an athlete, even one who filled the pockets of the 16 National League team owners with money beyond their wildest wants - including Magowan.

Nothing.

Even longtime San Francisco Chronicle columnist, Scott Ostler, who has never been confused with someone who has had a balanced perspective of the all-time home run leader, understands the significance of the profits generated by 14 years of service to Magowan and the Giants franchise:


I asked team president Peter Magowan if management considered some kind of visible tribute to Bonds and his record.“No,” Magowan said, eloquently.

A team official quickly noted that there would be something - a painted seat? - to mark the spot in the bleachers where Bonds’ No. 756 was caught.

For the past several years, the Giants have been the enablers of Bonds’ bad habits - ignoring evidence that his trainer was a ‘roids guy, allowing him to operate on his own wavelength. Because he sold tickets.

And now all they can do is (maybe) paint a seat?

Magowan is telling anyone who will listen that last season his team could not “finish games” (SF was 4-16 in games that were tied after eight innings), a disparaging allusion to Bonds and the overall age of the team. Yet Magowan apparently cannot stop himself from feeling the need to wash the specter of Bonds from his mind. He also tells the bald lie to a Bay Area fan base waiting to stay away from the stadium in droves that his team will be younger this season despite the obvious fact that they have almost no young talent, a gutted minor league system devoid of major league players, and a projected starting eight with seven of those players having an average age of over 34.

Again, from Ostler’s column:


“With Barry Bonds gone,” Magowan said, addressing the media throng, “this is clearly the beginning of a new era for the Giants.”He promised a “younger, faster, more energetic ballclub.”

But without Bonds tickets are already easier to get (Costco stores have four-packs readily available) and as the Giants flounder this season Magowan might find out what it is like to be booed in his luxury box because he is fielding an inferior product without even having a box office draw - like Barry Bonds.

The Giants are so bad that an opposing scout says of the team:


“The Giants aren’t as bad as you’ve heard —- they’re worse.”

It is said that most hitters in the Giants lineup would not start on other teams, that there are no pitching prospects in their farm system while their number one pitcher, Barry Zito, cannot reach the high-80 mph range with any pitch in his arsenal, and his once-lethal curveball lacks bite.

With a team that will be hard-pressed to win 65 games the smart thing to do would be to keep as many reminders of Bonds around AT&T as possible to distract the dwindling crowds. If Magowan had any brains and wasn’t bent on being such an ungrateful bastard he’d build a Bonds theme park with two life-size artificial-intelligence talking Bonds figures; one who talks in contrived platitudes to the fans and another in a replica of his locker configuration. That would be “clubhouse interview AI Bonds,” the one seated in a Barcalounger replying to actual recorded inane questions from reporters, spewing invectives:

Reporter: “So Barry, will you once and for all admit you took steroids?”

Bonds: “Look dude, you can kiss my bunions and then my ass.”

Hell, maybe by July Magowan will find that so few people come to his hitter’s catacomb by the BART that he’ll re-sign Bonds to a Roger Clemens’-like, pro-rated salary. If that doesn’t happen Magowan will be lucky to draw 20,000 a game, AT&T will want to beg out of its ballpark naming rights deal. The next phone company buying naming rights will be able to do so for a cut-rate price: Welcome to “Skype” Stadium: “Come to Skype and make a free call at one of our many Skype bodegas to any other person using Skype.”… oops, you can already do that.

But really, Peter Magowan could care less. As long as those 68 luxury suites, 5,200 club seats, and those 1,500 special field seats are paid for, and he get 10,000 more plebes to sit anywhere else they want, he’s fine. The contract signed in 2000 got him a cool $53 million in straight cash homey dollars for the naming rights through 2019; that through the thick of the last eight years and the desert carcass thin of the next indeterminate number of years to come.

AT&T is privately-funded, so Magowan needn’t answer to fans. They didn’t pay for the park so he can run it and the team in any manner he chooses. And if that means evacuating on the heads of the 25 million or so fans that have walked through the gates of the stadium, so what, he’ll do what he wants. Magowan is vain enough to have named his cat “Magowan” (at least he didn’t pull a Bob Johnson, owner of the Charlotte NBA franchise who named his team the Bobcats).

If it means pulling a University of Michigan move and pretending like Barry Bonds didn’t exist, save for a seat signifying home run #756 painted in right field, it is Magowan’s prerogative - and he is presently letting everyone know that it is.

His move also signifies the true sentiment the man has for another man who helped make him some of the money he has today, but who is not a peer, but a well-paid employee. And yes, Bonds was extremely well-paid. But his salary was a pittance compared with the money he brought to Magowan. But people should have known where Magowan stood when he brought Bonds to San Francisco and hired general manager Brian Sabean to construct a for-hire team of mercenaries around him instead of using Bonds as the core of a group of players and using the farm system to continuously feed the team rather than as trade bait for yet another veteran with a limited shelf life.

Bonds, too, should have known the day would come when Magowan would lead the charge for Major League Baseball to treat him as a pariah as was his father before him; the fuel that Bonds used to dominate baseball for all these years.

Now Barry Bonds, who last season was #1 in on-base percentage, walks, and intentional walks, #3 in home runs per at-bat, and #6 in OPS (on-base percentage, plus slugging percentage), cannot seem to find a job. No team will hire him, not even as a designated hitter.

The media tells the public that Bonds brings a circus-like atmosphere to a clubhouse when it is the media that creates this environment. The media has saddled Bonds with the “bad teammate” label. They have even used the specter of more charges being brought against Bonds as a reason to keep him from teams though his case is not likely to be heard until sometime mid-2009.

Every MLB owner is ever-grateful for those media members who put forth these lies and self-perpetuated negative truths concerning Bonds.

And Magowan’s actions are the deal-sealers.

The owners’ stance can now be, if his own employer would seek to completely distance himself from a man who made him hundreds of millions of dollars, why would any of us take a chance on hiring him and destroying our precious team chemistry? Long answer short - they wouldn’t.

Above and beyond anything else Magowan feels personally toward Bonds, he is one of an elite group of 30 men who have banded together to act as one for the good of no one but themselves. So wiping Bonds from AT&T and becoming the point man for blackballing Bonds from the game is saving these men from Bonds’ lawyers filing winnable lawsuits against MLB for invoking some “good of the game” rule against Bonds that is as weak as the paper on which it is written.

Barry Bonds has probably played his final game as a major league baseball player. And Peter Magowan is readying the Giants ballpark for a 60-65 win season.

And smiling like the cat that ate the canary…. because he did.

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    D.K. Wilson is a freelance sports writer. He is better known on the internet as "DWil," and writes for Sports On My Mind.

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