By the Associated Press
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
SAN FRAN – The routine fly to left that he flubbed the night before was forgotten. Barry Bonds redeemed himself with a splash
Bonds wiped away memories of the error and joined the slugging elite Tuesday night with his 500th home run, just the 17th player to reach the milestone.
The two-run shot over Pacific Bell Park’s right-field wall and into San Francisco Bay gave the Giants a 3-2 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers and sent Bonds on a joyful home-run trot.
Bonds had hit his 499th on Sunday in Milwaukee, but the three-time MVP and nine-time All-Star dropped Jeffrey Hammonds’ eighth-inning fly, allowing three runs as theBrewers downed the Giants 7-4.
Bonds was haunted. The gaffe was replayed extensively as he dealt with the pressure of reaching 500.
“I had such a big, strange incident happen to me in Milwaukee,” he said late Tuesday night. “And then a wonderful thing happened today.”
As Bonds watched the historic eighth-inning blast sail out of the park, he leaped in the air before rounding the bases. Afterward, he was joined by his father, former major leaguer Bobby Bonds; his wife; and Hall of Famers Willie Mays and Willie McCovey, who also hit 500 home runs.
“I wanted to run off the field and hug my wife, my dad, my mom, and to thank the Giants’ organization. Then I started looking for Willie (Mays). It was great they came out here,” Bonds said.
Mays, Bonds’ godfather, hit 660 homers, third on the career list behind Hank Aaron (755) and Babe Ruth (714). McCovey is 11th with 521.
Joe Figone, piloting an inflatable power boat, scooped up the ball after it splashed into McCovey Cove – an inlet of San Francisco Bay – with a hand-held net.
Bonds said they were in “negotiations” with Figone over the ball, which some have estimated to be worth more than $500,000. Figone, a former groundskeeper for the Giants at Candlestick Park, did not return phone calls on Wednesday.
Rich Aurilia started the eighth for the Giants with a triple off Dodgers’ reliever Terry Adams. Bonds was hoping for at least a fly ball to score Aurilia, tying the game.
The pivotal pitch to Bonds was a 2-0 slider. The sellout crowd let out a collective gasp as the ball came off his bat, arched high over the right field walkway and plopped into the water.
“Barry has a flair for the dramatic,” McCovey said. “I thought he would hit in a situation like this.”
Even Bonds was stunned.
“When I hit it, I couldn’t believe I hit it. Everything was in slow motion. It looked like it was stopped in midair,” he said.
He looked up at the fans sitting behind the right-field wall.
“Then I saw it went past those people,” he said, “and I thought, `Wow! I did it!'”
Bonds is the first player to reach 500 homers since Mark McGwire did it in 1999.
The 36-year-old outfielder was the eighth quickest to hit 500, in 7,502 at-bats. McGwire did it the fastest, in 5,487 at-bats.
Four players in the 500 club spent a majority of their careers with the Giants. Bonds joins Mays, McCovey and Mel Ott, who hit 511.
Eddie Murray ranks No. 16 on the all-time list with 504 home runs.
Bonds has 324 home runs since coming to San Francisco as a free agent before the 1993 season. He hit 176 with Pittsburgh.
He started this season 0-for-21 before homering in five straight games, a career high.
Bonds hit No. 499 in the fourth inning Sunday off David Weathers in the Brewers’ brand-new Miller Park. Bonds has homered in 24 major league ballparks.
It was the ninth home run to land in McCovey Cove. Bonds has hit seven -all of the Giants’ splash hits.
“I thought about my kids, my friends, my trainers, my chiropracters, everybody,” he said, eliciting a laugh. “Because they all helped me get here.”
ST. PETERSBURG – Larry Rothschild was fired Wednesday as manager of the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, becoming the first manager to lose his job with the season just two and one-half weeks old.
The Rays are currently in last place in the American League East with a 4-10 record. The firing came
several hours after the Devil Rays lost 10-0 to Boston.
“Hopefully we hit rock bottom and from here it will change,” the 47-year-old manager said after the game.
“If you’re going to lose, you’d prefer to do it the right way and play good clean games and know you’ll come out of it and be OK,” Rothschild said. “But there’s no consolation when you lose.”
The team called a news conference to discuss the change and announce a successor.
Rothschild compiled a 205-294 record during three-plus seasons as the team’s only manager.
ST. LOUIS – Now that a new $20 million minor-league ballpark is planned in Springfield, could it be the future home of a St. Louis Cardinals farm team?
John Q. Hammons won’t say that in so many words, but the wealthy Springfield hotelier hints a deal is in the works.
In a telephone interview with the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Hammons said he was hopeful that the Cardinals would convince league officials to let them abandon their Double-A New Haven, Conn., franchise in two years and establish a farm team in the Ozarks.
Hammons has met with Cardinals president Mark Lamping and general manager Walt Jocketty and he said official word on the deal could come next year. He said Lamping told him not to talk to reporters. In addition, Hammons said, Lamping promised him they would make the announcement jointly.
Although league officials say the minor league shuffle is “extremely unlikely,”Lamping is fueling speculation that minor league baseball will be played in Springfield, where, in 1941, a young Stan Musial hit 28 homers in three months and climbed quickly to the majors. Springfield hasn’t had a minor league team since 1950.
“We’d love to have a team there,” Lamping said in an interview last week, adding, however, that the process is complicated.
The buzz comes with one month left in the legislative session for the Cardinals to lock up the state’s share of their proposed $370 million project for a new ballpark in St. Louis.
The Cardinals are reaching out across Missouri to build statewide support, and Lamping has been talking up the new ballpark to civic groups from Cape Girardeau to Joplin to Kansas City.
The stadium bill pending in the Senate initially provided about half of the funding for a new downtown St. Louis ballpark. It now includes money for Savvis Center, a new basketball arena at the University of Missouri-Columbia and four Kansas City renovation projects: Arrowhead and Kaufman stadiums, Kemper Arena and the Municipal Auditorium. Springfield legislators and lobbyists also are watching the stadium bill. City officials are trying to get state money to pay for infrastructure costs related to a sprawling sports-convention center complex that includes an ice skating rink, indoor arena-and Hammons’ ballpark.
But there’s a glitch: the Ozark Mountain Ducks, an independent-league team about 10 minutes down the road from Springfield.
The Ducks don’t want anything from the state. They already have a ballpark, and they definitely don’t want another minor league team nearby.
House Speaker Jim Kreider, D-Nixa, whose hometown is very near Ozark, Mo., has been skeptical of all stadium projects because of the state’s budget crunch. But he has expressed additional hesitance about the Springfield project because the baseball park would compete with an existing one.
Kreider brought Lamping and Ozark city officials to his office at the Capitol last month. Ozark city administrator Collin Quigley said, “There was concern that some deal had already been struck” between the Cardinals and Hammons but that Lamping alleviated that.
“I was assured they were not pursuing a team in Springfield,” Kreider said.
But Hammons, who talks about his “two nice negotiating sessions” with Cardinals’ brass, can hardly keep still.
“I can’t tell you, yes, I got a deal with them,” Hammons told the Post-Dispatch. “That announcement will come in the very near future. I gave my word to Mark Lamping that I would not talk about it.”