The first half-inning took 20 minutes and the pitcher named Barry hit it farther than the batter named Barry.
It was Thursday night at Dodger Stadium, another Barry Bonds watch. What looked, felt and smelled like a Major League Baseball game was more a collection of sideshows.
There was Bonds, of course, and his quest for home runs Nos. 755 and 756. That would tie and pass Henry Aaron's record and would make the Giants' outfielder immortal in baseball history, at least to those who don't feel he got the record because he beefed up on substances meant to enhance his performance.
Those who do feel that way place him as immoral in baseball history.
Nothing is coming easy for Bonds these days. Pitchers in particular don't want to be the small print below the plaque in Cooperstown. In that first inning, Dodgers right-hander Brett Tomko, who is unlikely to get to Cooperstown any other way, threw Bonds such a collection of junk that Bonds needed radar to track it. On one pitch, Tomko was the reincarnation of the old slow-baller Stu Miller. On the next, he was Nolan Ryan.
Bonds walked and scored, and the inning ended when pitcher Barry Zito dribbled one to shortstop.
Lost in all this, of course, was the 3-0 lead the Giants took while Tomko pitched around Bonds and the fans in the sellout crowd of 56,000 stayed on the edge of their seats, waiting for another opportunity to lather up and lash out at their least-favorite player.
Another sideshow was what could be termed "presentation."
Perhaps it was not premeditated, but several things that went on in the minutes leading up to the first pitch seemed to send the message from Dodgers management to Dodgers fans that we are the Anti-Barry, the apple-pie, all-American good guys who should not be mistaken for this evil in the other dugout.
First, 10-year-old Hailey Dibiasi, cute as a bug and with a voice like a 10-year-old Streisand, cranked up the national anthem. Then, out came a handful of even younger cuties. The crowd was informed that each would run out to a Dodgers player in the field with a baseball and each would get the ball autographed. At home plate, Russell Martin bent over a tiny little girl with pigtails and looked her in the eye as he signed away.
Then, of course, every time Bonds walked to the plate, he was within several feet of one of the huge signs recently placed along the baselines by the McCourts, whose new official Dodgers charity is a cancer-fighter named "Think Cure!" With Bonds likely to bat in the fourth, the Dodgers ran a big screen promotional ad on the charity. Narrating, as only he can, was venerable Vin Scully.
