Barry Bonds
Barry Bonds
Barry Lamar Bondsis an American former professional baseball left fielder who played 22 seasons in Major League Baseballwith the Pittsburgh Pirates and San Francisco Giants. Bonds received seven NL MVP awards and 14 All-Star selections, and is considered to be one of the greatest baseball players of all time. Bonds is currently the co-hitting coach for the Miami Marlins along with Frank Menechino...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBaseball Player
Date of Birth24 July 1964
CityRiverside, CA
CountryUnited States of America
I've never cared about records anyway. So what difference does it make? Right now, I'm telling you, I don't even want to play next year. Baseball is a fun sport. But I'm not having fun. I love the game of baseball itself, but I don't like what it's turned out to be. I'm not mad at anybody. It's just that right now I am not proud to be a baseball player.
The timing is just not right. I have too many other responsibilities, too many things I have to take care of that are important to me. I owe it to the city (of San Francisco), my knee, my team, the fans and my family. I have to put my greatest effort right now into all of that.
I still have a whole bunch of cobwebs to work out down here. I have to be careful right now.
I am going to speak with Felipe, because at this point in my career it doesn't work for me to be second bat.
Right now, I'm just trying to get back on the field. I don't care about this whole record thing. I just care about doing the best job that I can. It's hard, man, when baseball is all I've ever known and all I've ever done, to hit the switch and dim the lights a little bit.
There are other issues a lot more serious, and you guys (the media) should direct your attention toward taking care of that, ... Ask yourselves how much you've donated to Katrina (relief). Everybody should be pointing the fingers at themselves.
The only number I care about is Babe Ruth's. Because as a left-handed hitter, I wiped him out. That's it. And in the baseball world, Babe Ruth's everything, right? I got his slugging percentage and I'll take his home runs and that's it. Don't talk about him no more.
My career is an open book, but my life is not
As an athlete, you only have so much time. The window only has so much time and then it closes. You have to take care of yourself the best you can.
Age is how you feel. If you take care of yourself, you'll be able to do the same things. You may not do it as often. But you can still do it.
As long as I'm healthy, I want to give it a try. It might not be here. But I'd hope the Giants would still want me. I'd like to finish my career in this shirt.
We talked about my knee and took a few X-rays. After looking at the X-rays, we decided it would be a good idea to drain the knee. This draining is to make sure there isn't any infection and that I'm healing properly. Overall everything looks positive.
I've played a long time. I've had a lot of fun doing it. We'll tackle that bridge when it happens. I'll sit back and talk with my family and take a long, long vacation and see how I feel. I could do that and get in the wintertime and say, ?That's enough,' and somewhere in January wake up and say, ?That's not enough.
I've been in L.A. for the most part in 90-degree weather, ... Coming up here to San Francisco and the cold ... I just want to see how I come out of it.