Live from AT&T Park, San Francisco:
9:50 pm: The Giants — the lineup full of scrubs and callups by the 9th inning — managed to put another run across, and the fans who remained — and why not remain, it was still a beautiful warm night — were starting to make noise. I even saw a few rally caps. But the veterans quickly restored a sense of reality to the proceedings. With two on, no out and a run in, Pedro Feliz struck out swinging at the worst pitch I ever saw, and then Ray Durham grounded into a double play to end the game.

Then the final scoreboard tribute to Bonds — with the honoree nowhere near the field — took place: a montage of Greatest Hits set to the tune of Frank Sinatra singing “My Way.” I thought I heard him singing “I’ve already changed out of my uniform, and I’m… on… the… highway.”

(For another view of the evening see this excellent SJ Mercury News piece by Andrew Baggarly.
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The Giants bullpen blew a two-run lead Tuesday night, victimizing hard-luck starter Matt Cain once again and giving the slumping Padres — who had lost five straight and almost given up the wild card lead — reason to hope.

Of course, the Giants still had their at-bats in the 9th inning, and since it had already been firmly announced that Barry Bonds would be in the starting lineup the next night in his last home game ever as a Giant, you might think he would be available to pinch-hit. With one out and one on, he would have been the tying run at the plate.

But Bonds, who had earlier been seen pacing in the dugout and playfully taking over a TV cameraman’s post at one point, was not available for a pinch-hit role in the 9th inning. Why? Because he had already changed out of his uniform. As reported after the game by KNBR, Bonds was already in his street clothes as the Giants folded in the 9th.

But he will start tomorrow. And he’ll probably say he’s doing it for the fans. He couldn’t possibly care about his teammates.

The Giants have won 9 of their last 11, including a sweep of the visiting Milwaukee Brewers. Of course, before that, they were 3-12 during Aug. 1-15, so don’t get too excited. They’re still 13 games under .500.

The home stand continues tonight with an opener against the Colorado Rockies and their Rookie-of-the-Year candidate Troy Tulowitzki who, among other exploits, performed an unassisted triple play earlier this year, giving rise to the short-lived nickname “Three-lowitzki.” Then, to make sure he had ‘em all, he threw to first, giving rise to the even shorter-lived nickname “Four-lowitski.”

Meanwhile, remember that player-to-be-named-later we were supposed to get from the Dodgers for Mark Sweeney?
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At the close of the celebratory home stand in which Barry Bonds hit… oh, you know the context already — the lowly Pittsburgh Pirates came into town and swept the Giants in three games.

You want to know how bad the Pirates are? Even after the three game sweep, the Pirates’ record was one percentage point worse than the Giants’.

Suckage: Today the visitors went ahead 3-0 in the 6th inning. [Game log.] What did the Giants do in their half of the inning, with the 3-4-5 hitters up? Out on 9 pitches. The Pirates’ starter, the unknown Tom Gorzelanny, scattered 5 hits and got his first complete game of his career.
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Chronicle newspaper vending machines this morning included the leftover Sunday papers marking Barry Bonds’ tying of Hank Aaron’s home run record (l.) and this morning’s editions covering his breaking the record last night.

The time was 8:51 p.m. PDT, under a wind-swept sky, when Bonds, the San Francisco Giants’ left fielder, crushed an 86-mph fastball from Washington Nationals left-hander Mike Bacsik over the wall in right-center field, the deepest corner of AT&T Park. It was a 3-2 pitch in the bottom of the fifth inning, and when the ball cleared the fence some 435 feet away, Bonds was alone atop the sport’s all-time home run list. It was homer No. 756, one more than the great Aaron hit.

So said the Washington Post this morning as the nation woke up with a new home run champion.
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I saw these all over Beijing and now we have that brilliant idea too. Check in your bike, get a ticket, and pick it up after the game. Excellent! From SF Curbed. My issue with biking is always bike theft- and this just solves that problem.

From StreetFilms

The week of good feeling around the All Star Game, the tribute to Willie Mays, Barry Bonds’ valedictory election to the starting lineup, and the line of charm he dropped on the national press ended yesterday in the worst possible way: a three-game sweep by the Dodgers at home, and Bonds dropping the F-bomb on local press. Asking for his reaction to the sweep and to going 0 for his last 20 at-bats, the reporters found the charm tap in the off position:

Yeah, it’s an embarrassment for me to be wearing this fucking uniform because of the way I’m playing. Now go away.

That’s from this morning’s SF Chronicle, but the quote was being played incessantly on the Giants’ flagship station KNBR 680 AM — if you turn it on now, you can probably still hear it. They’re running it like every five minutes.

Let’s break down that ejaculation after the jump.
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As the second half of the season opened, the local paper and the sportstalk radio hosts on the Giants’ flagship station trumpeted the necessity for the team to do well at home this weekend against the Dodgers. Because if they didn’t, there would be a fire sale. The trading deadline is coming up at the end of the month, and while the team as a whole sucks, there are several players who might be of use to some teams still in contention — and some of the them aren’t even pitchers.

Judging by the team’s performance tonight, the Giants better start getting those SALE tags ready.
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As baseball stars past and present gathered in San Francisco for the annual All Star Game, two names were on everyone’s lips. One was Barry Bonds, who put on the charm in a press conference Monday while skipping the tiring ordeal that was the Home Run Derby. Bonds has recently said he wants to play “in 2008.” Since he’s on a one-year-and-that’s-final contract with the Giants, that would mean he expects someone to pay him even more next year than he got this year ($15.8 million).

And the consensus is that after this year, for better or worse, the Giants are done with him. Mentioning Barry Bonds and 2008 in the same sentence is, to Giants management, like mentioning last April’s chemistry tests to a 19-year-old who just graduated from Here’s-Your-Diploma-Now-Join-The-Army High School.

Who might replace Bonds in the Giants lineup?
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Now that Barry Bonds is within 5 home runs of the all-time American record*, the AP asked the team’s radio announcers whether they plan to prepare a special call for the occasion. They all said they’d prefer to improvise, just as long as their microphone doesn’t cut out in the middle of the call.

* Japanese legend Sadaharu Oh has, of course, 868, while the American record is Hank Aaron‘s 755.
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