The Thing About Barry Bonds And Kanye West Is…

In 2005, I wrote a story about Tyler Walker, a middling relief pitcher for the San Francisco Giants. Do you know what a closer is? If not, it’s the pitcher who’s called upon to close out the game. Pitch the ninth inning, with all the pressure that implies.

Tyler (briefly) filled this role for the Giants. And I, intrepid reporter for a Marin County alt weekly, obtained a press pass and set out to interview him.

The interview was brief. It’s referenced on his Wikipedia page, but all I remember is Tyler staring vacantly at his cell phone (back when that was a newish thing), initially refusing to speak with me and then offering a half-hearted Q&A highlighted by the line, “Have arm, will pitch.”

Why am I telling you this?

Well, as it happens, there was another player on the 2005 San Francisco Giants. His name was Barry Lamar Bonds.

I didn’t meet him that day. But I did spot the beige BarcaLounger parked next to his locker which was twice as wide as all the other lockers. I felt his Presence, capital “P.”

No one, in my experience, has ever filled a room so completely without being there at all.

Barry Bonds’ dad, Bobby, was very good at baseball. He hit 332 home runs and stole 461 bases in a big league career that spanned 14 years and seven cities, from New York to San Francisco.

Bobby was an alcoholic, filled with equal parts rage and God-given athletic talent.

He was also, to hear his son tell it, an unrelenting task-master.

“I always questioned why he was sympathetic to others, while I was out there working my butt off,” the younger Bonds said of his dad as Barry’s No. 25 jersey was retired by the Giants in 2018. “Every time I’d say something like, ‘Hey, Dad, I hit two home runs today.’ He would say, ‘Good. Hit two more tomorrow.’”

So that’s Part 1 of the Bonds Explanation. An domineering father figure who could never be satisfied.

You’ll understand Part 2 if you read Game of Shadows, the scathing expose by reporters Lance Williams and Mark Fainaru-Wada.

It explains Bonds’ allegiance with the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative and the ensuing late-career surge that made him the single-season and all-time home run king.

Bonds began using performance-enhancing drugs in response to St. Louis Cardinals first baseman Mark McGwire’s chemically enhanced exploits. He saw McGwire, a hulking Caucasian slugger referred to by fawning scribes as a combination of Popeye and Paul Bunyan, as a symbol of baseball’s tortured racial legacy. Here’s how Williams and Fainaru-Wada phrased it:

“As he sometimes did when he was in a particularly bleak mood, Bonds was channeling racial attitudes picked up from his father, the former Giants’ star Bobby Bonds, and his godfather, the great Willie Mays, both African-American ballplayers who had experienced virulent racism while starting their professional careers in the Jim Crow South. Barry Bonds himself had never seen anything remotely like that: He had grown up in an affluent white suburb on the San Francisco Peninsula, and his best boyhood friend, his first wife, and his present girlfriend all were white. When Bonds railed about McGwire, he didn’t articulate who “they” were, or how the supposed conspiracy to rig the home run record was being carried out. But his brooding anger was real enough, and it continued throughout a year in which he batted .303, hit 37 home runs, made the All-Star team for the eighth time, and was almost completely ignored.”

Kanye West isn’t hardcore.

A child of divorce raised by a single mother, he moved around, lived in China among other places, attended various performing arts schools and ultimately settled into his current life.

Husband of Kim Kardashian. Hip-hop artist. Fashionista. Writer of the song “Barry Bonds.”

To the lyrics:

“Talked it then he lived it, spit it then he shit it
I don’t need writers, I might bounce ideas
But only I could come up with some shit like this
I done played the underdog my whole career
I’ve been a very good sport, haven’t I, this year
They say “he going crazy and we seen this before”
But I’m doing pretty good as far as geniuses go …

Life of a Don, lights keep glowing
Coming in the club with that fresh shit on
With something crazy on my arm
Uh-uh-hum, and here’s another hit, Barry Bonds…”

Kanye West is a narcissist of the highest order. He should be compared, he insists, to Willy Wonka rather than Steve Jobs.

He is strong; he is fragile. He is a victim; he is victimizing. He is winning; he is losing.

Kanye West is possibly a bad person. He professes to like Donald Trump. He has been photographed frequently in a MAGA hat. He preens and poses in sad, unflattering ways.

Barry Bonds is probably a bad person. Past girlfriends have accused him of physical and emotional abuse. He is sullen, surly, simpering. Pick your alliterative adjective.

We could leave it there and call it a day.

But Kanye and Barry also exude Talent, capital “T.” Undeniable, generation-defining talent.

And if you zoom back and consider the context, they make you wonder what a Black man is supposed to do in 2021.

Hit home runs? Make hit records? Be apologetic or unapologetic? Lug the sins of the father and the weight of the past or shed them like so much detritus?

Racism is different now than it was when Bobby Bonds and Willie Mays and Kanye’s dad were in their respective primes. Barry and Kanye are lucky in many ways; they’re rich and successful.

In a sense, though, that makes their struggle more poignant. More immediate. More complicated and tricky to parse.

I can’t dislike Bonds. I have too many memories of cheering his exploits until my throat rebelled. He was the Giants during the salad days of my fandom.

The Bonds I know is the guy who won a cabinet full of Gold Gloves, who routinely stole 30-plus bases, who had perhaps the most discerning eye in history. A complete, almost-perfect ballplayer before he ever touched a syringe.

I can’t dislike Kanye. I appreciate the sublime artistry of Late Registration and the greatness of Watch the Throne.

A couple more quotes:

“If you have the opportunity to play this game of life you need to appreciate every moment.”

-Kanye West

“I like to be against the odds. I’m not afraid to be lonely at the top. With me, it’s just the satisfaction of the game.”

-Barry Bonds

I see that empty BarcaLounger. I see a lonely childhood in China.

I see, or think I do, two men torn between image and idolatry and arrested development. Haunted in equal measure by the past the present. Villains in their own heroes journeys.

Here’s another hit.

Barry Bonds.