Wiping Barry Bonds from AT&T: Peter Magowan’s and MLB’s Master Plan
March 28, 2008
In a move that is as crass as it is reprehensible, San Francisco Giants owner Peter Magowan removed any sign of Barry Bonds’ presence at SBC bought by Pac Bell, merged with AT&T Park.
Not even a “756″ sign remains.
The move also illustrates the worth of an athlete, even one who filled the pockets of the 16 National League team owners with money beyond their wildest wants - including Magowan.
Nothing.
Even longtime San Francisco Chronicle columnist, Scott Ostler, who has never been confused with someone who has had a balanced perspective of the all-time home run leader, understands the significance of the profits generated by 14 years of service to Magowan and the Giants franchise:
I asked team president Peter Magowan if management considered some kind of visible tribute to Bonds and his record.
“No,” Magowan said, eloquently.
A team official quickly noted that there would be something - a painted seat? - to mark the spot in the bleachers where Bonds’ No. 756 was caught.
For the past several years, the Giants have been the enablers of Bonds’ bad habits - ignoring evidence that his trainer was a ‘roids guy, allowing him to operate on his own wavelength. Because he sold tickets.
And now all they can do is (maybe) paint a seat?
Magowan is telling anyone who will listen that last season his team could not “finish games” (SF was 4-16 in games that were tied after eight innings), a disparaging allusion to Bonds and the overall age of the team. Yet Magowan apparently cannot stop himself from feeling the need to wash the specter of Bonds from his mind. He also tells the bald lie to a Bay Area fan base waiting to stay away from the stadium in droves that his team will be younger this season despite the obvious fact that they have almost no young talent, a gutted minor league system devoid of major league players, and a projected starting eight with seven of those players having an average age of over 34.
Again, from Ostler’s column:
“With Barry Bonds gone,” Magowan said, addressing the media throng, “this is clearly the beginning of a new era for the Giants.”
He promised a “younger, faster, more energetic ballclub.”
But without Bonds tickets are already easier to get (Costco stores have four-packs readily available) and as the Giants flounder this season Magowan might find out what it is like to be booed in his luxury box because he is fielding an inferior product without even having a box office draw - like Barry Bonds.
The Giants are so bad that an opposing scout says of the team:
“The Giants aren’t as bad as you’ve heard —- they’re worse.”
It is said that most hitters in the Giants lineup would not start on other teams, that there are no pitching prospects in their farm system while their number one pitcher, Barry Zito, cannot reach the high-80 mph range with any pitch in his arsenal, and his once-lethal curveball lacks bite.
With a team that will be hard-pressed to win 65 games the smart thing to do would be to keep as many reminders of Bonds around AT&T as possible to distract the dwindling crowds. If Magowan had any brains and wasn’t bent on being such an ungrateful bastard he’d build a Bonds theme park with two life-size artificial-intelligence talking Bonds figures; one who talks in contrived platitudes to the fans and another in a replica of his locker configuration. That would be “clubhouse interview AI Bonds,” the one seated in a Barcalounger replying to actual recorded inane questions from reporters, spewing invectives:
Reporter: “So Barry, will you once and for all admit you took steroids?”
Bonds: “Look dude, you can kiss my bunions and then my ass.”
Hell, maybe by July Magowan will find that so few people come to his hitter’s catacomb by the BART that he’ll re-sign Bonds to a Roger Clemens’-like, pro-rated salary. If that doesn’t happen Magowan will be lucky to draw 20,000 a game, AT&T will want to beg out of its ballpark naming rights deal. The next phone company buying naming rights will be able to do so for a cut-rate price: Welcome to “Skype” Stadium: “Come to Skype and make a free call at one of our many Skype bodegas to any other person using Skype.”… oops, you can already do that.
But really, Peter Magowan could care less. As long as those 68 luxury suites, 5,200 club seats, and those 1,500 special field seats are paid for, and he get 10,000 more plebes to sit anywhere else they want, he’s fine. The contract signed in 2000 got him a cool $53 million in straight cash homey dollars for the naming rights through 2019; that through the thick of the last eight years and the desert carcass thin of the next indeterminate number of years to come.
AT&T is privately-funded, so Magowan needn’t answer to fans. They didn’t pay for the park so he can run it and the team in any manner he chooses. And if that means evacuating on the heads of the 25 million or so fans that have walked through the gates of the stadium, so what, he’ll do what he wants. Magowan is vain enough to have named his cat “Magowan” (at least he didn’t pull a Bob Johnson, owner of the Charlotte NBA franchise who named his team the Bobcats).
If it means pulling a University of Michigan move and pretending like Barry Bonds didn’t exist, save for a seat signifying home run #756 painted in right field, it is Magowan’s prerogative - and he is presently letting everyone know that it is.
His move also signifies the true sentiment the man has for another man who helped make him some of the money he has today, but who is not a peer, but a well-paid employee. And yes, Bonds was extremely well-paid. But his salary was a pittance compared with the money he brought to Magowan. But people should have known where Magowan stood when he brought Bonds to San Francisco and hired general manager Brian Sabean to construct a for-hire team of mercenaries around him instead of using Bonds as the core of a group of players and using the farm system to continuously feed the team rather than as trade bait for yet another veteran with a limited shelf life.
Bonds, too, should have known the day would come when Magowan would lead the charge for Major League Baseball to treat him as a pariah as was his father before him; the fuel that Bonds used to dominate baseball for all these years.
Now Barry Bonds, who last season was #1 in on-base percentage, walks, and intentional walks, #3 in home runs per at-bat, and #6 in OPS (on-base percentage, plus slugging percentage), cannot seem to find a job. No team will hire him, not even as a designated hitter.
The media tells the public that Bonds brings a circus-like atmosphere to a clubhouse when it is the media that creates this environment. The media has saddled Bonds with the “bad teammate” label. They have even used the specter of more charges being brought against Bonds as a reason to keep him from teams though his case is not likely to be heard until sometime mid-2009.
Every MLB owner is ever-grateful for those media members who put forth these lies and self-perpetuated negative truths concerning Bonds.
And Magowan’s actions are the deal-sealers.
The owners’ stance can now be, if his own employer would seek to completely distance himself from a man who made him hundreds of millions of dollars, why would any of us take a chance on hiring him and destroying our precious team chemistry? Long answer short - they wouldn’t.
Above and beyond anything else Magowan feels personally toward Bonds, he is one of an elite group of 30 men who have banded together to act as one for the good of no one but themselves. So wiping Bonds from AT&T and becoming the point man for blackballing Bonds from the game is saving these men from Bonds’ lawyers filing winnable lawsuits against MLB for invoking some “good of the game” rule against Bonds that is as weak as the paper on which it is written.
Barry Bonds has probably played his final game as a major league baseball player. And Peter Magowan is readying the Giants ballpark for a 60-65 win season.
And smiling like the cat that ate the canary…. because he did.
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12 Responses to “Wiping Barry Bonds from AT&T: Peter Magowan’s and MLB’s Master Plan”
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Another lesson in just how disposable players are to the higher-ups. Not even the home-run king is immune.
Peter Magowan would have been in Tampa Bay first if not for Bonds saving baseball in San Francisco.
“With Barry Bonds gone,” Magowan said, addressing the media throng, “this is clearly the beginning of a new era for the Giants.”
He promised a “younger, faster, more energetic ballclub.”
Player 40 years of age: Omar Vizquel
Players 36 years of age: Rich Aurilia, Ray Durham
Players 35 years of age: Dave Roberts, Steve Kline
Player 33 years of age: Randy Kline
Younger, faster, more energetic. Okay
Dwil, while Barry Zito was a bust, don’t overlook the potential of Matt Cain, Tim Lincecum, and Noah Lowery. They at least have a semi-decent starting rotation.
des-
Unfortunately, Zito was brought in to be the ace of their staff, Lowry just had shoulder surgery for a rare condition and though Lowry will return to the staff soon, you can’t count on him until we find out if he heals correctly.
I’m a Giants fans and hope they do well - but even if they get 15 wins apiece (that would be incredible), how do they get to 70 wins?
dwil,
The short answer, IMO, is they will be one of the two worse teams in MLB this season, the Orioles being the other.
Regarding Magowan and Bonds’s relationship, picture Magowan as Jack Horner and Bonds as Dirk Diggler…
I think I am a former Giants fan as long as Magowan and Sabean are there. I feel like removing all remnants of Giants team paraphernalia from my house.
Not attempting to bait anyone, but it seems to me that sympathies towards Barry are divided by race (exception is Howard Bryant).
Thanks for calling out the lies - media interviews of Barry Bonds are gonna hurt the team only if some player trips over their equipment. The Giants, well, they sucked and it wasn’t caused by any media circus. They had media coverage in 2002. Another lie is poor defense, which isn’t even applicable in half of MLB and only peripherally applicable in the NL.
[…] put together a similar rant right around the same time I did: …. The Giants are so bad that an opposing scout says of the […]
To echo S2N, this is what the slavers of old did to the “animals” they have on ther plantation cutting sugar cane and picking cotton for them. A
fter the money is made, the big house is built and the legacy of welath establish, they discard the beast of burden off to the side, to old to be re-sold, to old to be a breeder, to old to pick cotton…well maybe not, but not on my plantation.
If righteous folks don’t see that slavery is back in effect (to quote sistah soljah) then we will never see.
sankofa-
Mark McGwire is getting the same treatment in St. Louis, yes? I remember the OTL segment where they won’t display his statue and it sits in the maker’s warehouse, or in some closeted area somewhere. And didn’t they remove his memorabilia from Busch Stadium? I thought they did…. Now this is not to say that we get “done” like that, but isn’t this a regular occurrence across the board when it comes to an athlete who isn’t “sufficiently grateful enough” to the team owner or the league?
sounds like what the Washington Wizards owner did to Jordan after he decided to retire
dwil, spaceghost
I’ve seen and have used the analogy of the Roman coliseum before in describing the athletes and their relations with the modern day owners and the spectators.
Performing monkeys I call them… and they are treated as such most of the time…
… unless they are good behaving pets
Here’s the pitch…
I was a season tix holder when I lived in the Bay area. Except for ‘89, the Giants sucked…period. Barry was exactly what he is depicted as in the media…he was a jerk. BUT, he was a putemintheseatsletsgoseeifhecorksoneintothebaywowdidyouseethat kind of jerk. He was that way in the clubhouse, on the golf course (we played with he and his dad once in Half Moon Bay) and in his outside the ballpark life (he stiffed many a contractor in building his house.)
Now, that said..the only guy worse…Peter Magowan. No real baseball in his blood, no desire to do anything for the fans unless it made him some serious cash (PacBell Park…SBC Park…AT&T Park…was a cash maker only…he dolled it up so it looked good, but it was on his terms.
Barry and Peter hated each other but neither could divest himself of the other without hurting their wallet. So, Barry held Peter up on salary a couple times, Peter used Barry to line his pockets by pumping the homerun races every time, Barry cereated his own media campaign so he could control the flow of dollars, Peter helped so he could make MORE money, and finally, Pete dumps Barry when it suits him.
These dudes deserve each other because at heart they are joyless creatures. I tip the hat to Bonds for hitting those homers…juice or not, that is a BUNCH of HRs and no one was soft-tossing the pitches. But, in the end , San Francisco baseball is dying because of them both.
Going to opening day 2008 isn’t even appealing. How could Magowan be such a jerk? Between Magowan and Sabean, the Giants are gonna suck - just wait.
Barry Bonds is the best there is and you guys are a bunch of bums for your attitude towards him. he paid for the damned ball park and you know it. I agree with one of the previous comments. Don’t even think I’ll be a Giants fan until the two of you are gone - sooner rather than later I hope.
Barry made watching baseball so much fun. And for you to remover every trace of him at the park is unconscionable. He is the homerun king whether you like it or not! I wish him the best and thank him for the years of fun and excitement he brought to the Giants and the bay area.