http://www.boston.com/sports/baseba.../06/18/18bonds/
Blasting zone
Bonds makes a powerful statement on, off field
By Gordon Edes, Globe Staff | June 18, 2004
SAN FRANCISCO -- Barry Bonds, whose numbers argue forcefully that he has surpassed Ted Williams -- and by the time he is finished, anyone else -- as the greatest hitter who ever lived, will play against the Red Sox this weekend for the first time in his 19-year major league baseball career.
For Red Sox fans who might idly muse what it would be like to see Bonds in a home uniform, don't bother. Yes, the San Francisco Giants left fielder said here on a recent afternoon he could possibly end his career in the American League as a designated hitter, as long as that didn't take him away from his family. So geography would almost certainly eliminate Boston as a last stop in a career spent exclusively in the National League, the last dozen seasons in northern California.
But Bonds, whose knowledge of baseball history had him humorously mocking a visitor stumbling to draw comparisons between Williams's feats with the Red Sox and those of the 39-year-old Giants slugger, said Boston is a place he would never call home.
"Boston is too racist for me,'' he said. "I couldn't play there.''
It is a judgment, he acknowledges, not derived of firsthand experience -- he missed the 1999 All-Star Game, played in Boston, because of an injury -- but on word-of-mouth.
"Only what guys have said," he said, "but that's been going on ever since my dad [Bobby] was playing baseball. I can't play like that. That's not for me, brother."
When it was suggested the racial climate has changed in Boston, Bonds demurred.
"It ain't changing," he said. "It ain't changing nowhere."
They built a tunnel to honor Ted Williams in Boston. What did he imagine would be built for him?
"Nothing, man," he said. "I'm black. They don't build stuff for blacks."
Blasting zone
Bonds makes a powerful statement on, off field
By Gordon Edes, Globe Staff | June 18, 2004
SAN FRANCISCO -- Barry Bonds, whose numbers argue forcefully that he has surpassed Ted Williams -- and by the time he is finished, anyone else -- as the greatest hitter who ever lived, will play against the Red Sox this weekend for the first time in his 19-year major league baseball career.
For Red Sox fans who might idly muse what it would be like to see Bonds in a home uniform, don't bother. Yes, the San Francisco Giants left fielder said here on a recent afternoon he could possibly end his career in the American League as a designated hitter, as long as that didn't take him away from his family. So geography would almost certainly eliminate Boston as a last stop in a career spent exclusively in the National League, the last dozen seasons in northern California.
But Bonds, whose knowledge of baseball history had him humorously mocking a visitor stumbling to draw comparisons between Williams's feats with the Red Sox and those of the 39-year-old Giants slugger, said Boston is a place he would never call home.
"Boston is too racist for me,'' he said. "I couldn't play there.''
It is a judgment, he acknowledges, not derived of firsthand experience -- he missed the 1999 All-Star Game, played in Boston, because of an injury -- but on word-of-mouth.
"Only what guys have said," he said, "but that's been going on ever since my dad [Bobby] was playing baseball. I can't play like that. That's not for me, brother."
When it was suggested the racial climate has changed in Boston, Bonds demurred.
"It ain't changing," he said. "It ain't changing nowhere."
They built a tunnel to honor Ted Williams in Boston. What did he imagine would be built for him?
"Nothing, man," he said. "I'm black. They don't build stuff for blacks."
