Baseball / Bonds-ron

As Bar­ry Bonds approach­es Babe Ruth on the life­time home­run list, he's get­ting a heck­u­va lot of ambiva­lent cov­er­age: Vet­er­ans express ambiva­lence and skep­ti­cism (SI), even San Fran­cis­cans sour­ing on the event (AP via ESPN), but base­ball has seen worse, though not by much (ESPN). I fig­ured I'd do some first-hand inves­ti­ga­tion this after­noon, so I rode down to AT&T Park dur­ing lunch. When Bonds came up to bat, there was the req­ui­site "Bar-ry, Bar-ry," but even this seemed pret­ty half-heart­ed, like every­one felt that they kin­da had to chant along. Cyn­i­cal com­ments rip­pled through the crowd. It seems weird to say this, but maybe you don't have to like Bonds as a per­son to feel drawn to his achieve­ment. Or, how about this: Maybe there's a whole dif­fer­ent kind of enjoy­ment that one derives from watch­ing vil­lains break records? What­ev­er it was, it was def­i­nite­ly not 2001 all over again, when a Bonds at-bat sent pal­pa­ble elec­tic­i­ty through the crowd. In 2006, it's more akin to watch­ing Enron execs lie their ass­es off in court.