by Ron Halvorson
Barry Bonds saunters to the plate,
His bat heavy, probably the biggest Louisville Slugger ever,
Hollowed out from an old-growth Appalachian ash tree.
Waving it,
As the crowd roars,
Voices crescending,
like an ocean swell from under the Golden Gate.
His eyesight? Exquisite pinpoint, radar–
Like a soaring bird of prey, he tracks the baseball.
His reflexes?
Feral now,
Muscle fibers firing off like a crack hit of adrenalin, crouched at the plate,
Bat pulsating in a death dance.
Through his baseball brain,
The Divine drugs course,
As the horrified pitcher fires his best fastball, 100 mph,
every stitch and spin revealed by the Bonds dystopian gaze.
Then the famous Bonds swing is unleashed,
handed down from father Bobby–
Extraterrestrial,
flashing through the zone in a nanosecond.
A batsman like no one has ever seen before.
Not a clumsy oaf, like
Ruth,
But a work of art,
Grecian marble chiseled by the stoned baseball Gods.
Crack!
The spheroid rises into the blue azure,
as bat meets ball,
an upper-cut for the ages,
Perfect arc rising above the frozen right fielder,
Splash!
Into San Francisco Bay.
Remember that summer day at Candlestick?
The hapless Giants 25 games behind?
Before the era of steroids, Bonds had already won three MVPs.
The immortal titan was still a skinny kid then,
Already a three-time MVP.
We’re all alone in the left field bleachers, way up high,
Does he see us?
We’re getting plastered on cheap beer and strong homegrown,
watching superstar Barry Bonds standing so alone in the outfield.
He’s “Sullen, rude, entitled, misunderstood,” the sportswriters say. . .
What do they know?
Barry just looks bored and lonely to us that day.
Between innings, he trots out to his position, turns in circles, people-watching.
“Shit, ballplayers never talk to the fans,
especially if they’re loaded.”
We yell at our hero anyway,
screaming drunken banshees that we were.
“Hey Barry, we love you!”
The old park is nearly empty, and he’s standing 20 feet away from us,
surely he can hear us:
“Peace, Man!”
We flash him the universal hippie sign.
Surely, he won’t respond. They never do.
We’re just dreaming, diehard Giant fans, after all.
Then between batters, the great Barry Bonds holds up his extra big fielder’s glove to the side of his head, and flashes us the universal sign of love right back.
“Peace to you hippies partying all alone in the cheap seats!”
is surely the message.
He holds his large fingers in the V for us,
As the mystical skunky sinsemilla smoke drifts in the outfield breeze, and Barry at last smiles,
even for the next few pitches, the good feelings linger, as we flash “Peace” back.
Was the great Barry Bonds just feeling nice that day?
Who cares! He’s our San Francisco Giant hero for life now.
Let him in, Cooperstown!
Ron Halvorson is a freelance writer and lifelong San Francisco Giants fan who went to his first game at windy Candlestick Park in the early 1960s.