You could see it in his face and the way he spoke: Barry Bonds had a good time in Boston.
Maybe Boston fans didn't want him to have a good time. Maybe they wanted him to skip out of town and hope he would never have to return. Maybe Sox fans wish they were even tougher on him than they were, so he would remember how nasty it was. But it wasn't anything Bonds hadn't heard before and it wasn't as bad as the reception he received both on and off the field in New York.
Bonds's pursuit of Hank Aaron's home run record has often been joyless. He hit his 748th against Tim Wakefield in the sixth inning yesterday, his first at Fenway Park, and even though the Red Sox swept the weekend series, you could tell Bonds enjoyed his time here.
It was clear his perception of the city, the fans, and all of the things negative about Boston, which he once referred to as a racist city, changed over this weekend.
"He genuinely enjoyed himself here," said one teammate. "He walked around the city a lot and people were really nice to him. They weren't yelling at him, or yelling stuff at him or anything like that. People were very respectful of him. I think for a lot of us, this was kind of a test because we heard Boston would be rough on him. In the ballpark, sure there were the asterisks that people were holding up, and the "Steroids!" chants and all the things he's seen and heard before. So that part wasn't any different. The part that was different is the reception he got on the streets. And even the reception he got when he hit the home run."
It is true, we all looked forward to this series when we thought of Bonds playing in Boston, where the fans would surely be brutal. I had predicted long ago that Bonds would skip this series. When he was hot early in the season, the Boston series was projected as a possible place where he could break the record. Many felt he would never break it anywhere but San Francisco, where most fans have supported him.
But he showed up, did the normal first-day news conference that he's done in every city (which is a requirement in his contract) and he also did two post game interviews. He left here feeling a lot different about Boston than when he arrived.
He heard boos, but he also heard cheers.
That's because there's a segment of the population that doesn't care about steroids. While fans don't approve of players taking substances to enhance their performance, they also know that hitting a baseball that well for that long has to be about more than ingesting a steroid.
Even before the allegations, Bonds was a five-tool player and arguably the greatest player of his generation. Many believe he had earned a place in the Hall of Fame even before he allegedly started taking steroids.
