Saturday, April 14, 2007
Matt Freed, Post-Gazette
Barry Bonds hit two home runs against the Pirates last night at PNC Park. He now has 737 career homers.
By Dejan Kovacevic, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
It was in Pittsburgh where Barry Bonds got his start toward the most celebrated record in professional sports.
And it was in Pittsburgh where, in grand fashion, he got his jump-start toward finishing it off.
Shrugging off a .192 average, just one long ball in his first 26 at-bats and incessant booing from the 22,117 at PNC Park, Bonds smashed his 736th and 737th home runs - not to mention his RBI single and four RBIs -- in the San Francisco Giants' 8-5 thumping of the Pirates last night.
Matt Freed, Post-Gazette
The Giants' Barry Bonds hits a two-run home run against Pirates starter Zach Duke in the second inning last night.
Hello, 2007.
And, before long: Hello, Hank Aaron.
Bonds is 19 away from claiming the record, the pursuit of which began June 4, 1986, as a member of the Pirates with a shot to center off Atlanta's Craig McMurtry.
And the breakout certainly came as no surprise to the current Pirates.
"Nah, I've seen that before," said manager Jim Tracy, who faced Bonds often while in Los Angeles. "That's what he does. And what's interesting about this is that he hit two completely different pitches to two completely different places."
True enough.
The first came off a Zach Duke sinker that sunk little in the second inning. Bonds pulled it inside the right foul pole, three rows above the Clemente Wall.
The next came off a fastball that was not Shawn Chacon's best, 88 mph, up and over the heart of the plate. Bonds stroked it beyond the seating section in right-center.
That marked the 70th time Bonds homered more than once in a game, a category in which he trails only Babe Ruth's 72.
It was not known what Bonds thought of all that, as he left the ballpark immediately after the game ended without speaking to reporters. But his manager, Bruce Bochy, summed it up succinctly.
"It was a great day for Barry," Bochy said. "We're trying to get this offense going, and he really made that happen."
The Giants had scored only 20 runs in opening their season 2-7.
And that was only half of what made the evening somewhat strange. The other half was that pitching had been the Pirates' strength, particularly the work of Duke and Ian Snell in leading the rotation.
But Duke would last only two innings and get slammed for seven runs.
He did not exactly sugarcoat his assessment afterward.
"I stunk tonight," he said. "I was bad. There was not a whole lot that was positive, so, basically, I'm going to put this one out of my mind and move on to the next one."
Matt Freed, Post-Gazette
Pirates starter Zach Duke gave up five runs to the Giants in the first inning last night at PNC Park.
It started with what, without question, was the worst inning of Duke's young career.
He raised an immediate red flag with a five-pitch walk to leadoff man Omar Vizquel, then a single by Todd Linden off an 0-2 pitch. After an out, Bonds' liner to right brought the first San Francisco run.
It would get uglier. Ray Durham doubled. After a forceout at the plate, Pedro Feliz doubled. Randy Winn was intentionally walked to load the bases for pitcher Russ Ortiz, a career .207 hitter. Duke fell behind 3-0, and Ortiz lashed a meaty fastball for a double to left that put the Giants up, 5-0.
Duke's pitch count in that inning was 42, with 20 of those missing the strike zone.
"Zach never got untracked," Tracy said. "You could see it with the first two batters, then falling behind the pitcher like that. It's the only time, including spring training, he didn't have command. That happens."
The Pirates answered with two in the bottom half, on a sacrifice fly by Freddy Sanchez and an RBI double by Jason Bay, but Duke gave those right back in the second on Bonds' two-run shot that made it 7-2.
"It was hung," Duke said of his sinker. "It was supposed to be down and away, and it was right down the middle."
What went wrong in general?
"It was pretty much everything," Duke said. "The fastball command wasn't there. Neither was the offspeed."
He paused.
"Like I said, it never happened."
Matt Freed, Post-Gazette
Ronny Paulino tags out Barry Bonds at home plate in the first inning last night.
Chacon relieved Duke, and his only blemish in four innings was Bonds' other bash.
After that, Bonds was given the rest of the night off by Bochy, "just to rest his legs," Bochy said.
Bonds probably will have one of the other two games in this series off, too, Bochy added.
The Pirates' only offense after that first-inning spurt came with an irrelevant three-run home run by Chris Duffy with two outs in the ninth. It came on the 121st and final pitch thrown by Ortiz, whom Bochy was trying to get a complete game. As it was, Vinnie Chulk had to come on for the final out.
The Pirates have lost four in a row, a span in which they have just six extra-base hits, and are 1-6 since that three-game sweep in Houston.
By the later innings, with Bonds gone, the crowd turned on one of its own: For the first time this season, Adam LaRoche was booed loudly after striking out in the eighth to go hitless in three at-bats. His 0-for-17 slide has dropped his average to .088, and his 15 strikeouts are seven more than anyone else on the roster.
(Dejan Kovacevic can be reached at dkovacevic@post-gazette.com.)
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