By Steve Marinucci
Published June 30, 2002 in San Jose (CA) Mercury News
BONDS BOOKS REVEAL LITTLE ABOUT MAN
IN LINE WITH CAREER, GIANTS SLUGGER KEEPS WRITERS AT BAY
Barry Bonds, we hardly know you.
And it would seem that you prefer it that way.
As the Giants left fielder often says in news conferences, he prefers to play rather than talk. And that's basically the problem that faced the authors of these two books written in the shadow of Bonds' record-shattering 2001 season, during which he hit 73 home runs and put Mark McGwire's record of 70, set only three years earlier, in his rear-view mirror.
How do you write a book about a man who would rather make his statements on the field than on the printed page?
Well, both books do tell the story, though neither is the quintessential portrait one would hope for.
Why? Because both got little cooperation from Bonds. Though both books have one-on-one interviews with him, neither was authorized. So both authors basically had to sit down and tell it as they saw it. To their credit, though, both make a decent attempt.
The more straightforward of the two was ''This Gracious Season: Barry Bonds and the Greatest Year in Baseball'' by Josh Suchon, the Giants beat writer for the Oakland Tribune. Suchon's book is written seemingly out of his notes as he covered the 2001 season for the paper.
As befits the basic impartiality of newspaper writers, Suchon sticks to the facts about the struggles Bonds faced, especially as the record came within his grasp.
Suchon's book begins at the start of the 2001 season and ends with Bonds re-signing with the Giants during the off-season. In between, he gives almost a game-by-game account of the season.
There's no suspense, no flowery prose, and, surprisingly, little background on Bonds' pre-Giants career. The book reads almost like a movie as it concentrates on the 2001 season, presenting what in Bonds' life led to the record-setting season, then a basic day-by-day account as he broke the record.
Other than a recounting of the now well-known Jeff Kent Sports Illustrated interview with Rick Reilly -- both books suggest that came out of Reilly's spite that he couldn't get an interview with Bonds -- there's no mudslinging. The book's title, ''This Gracious Season,'' basically sets the tone. The narrative has almost a wispy quality.
''Barry Bonds: Baseball's Superman,'' by Steven Travers, has a different approach. The author, a former San Francisco Examiner sports columnist, also lists professional baseball pitcher in the St. Louis organization among his credentials. On the dust jacket, he boasts he once struck out 15 batters in a game.
Despite that boasting, Travers' book presents a more wide-ranging biographical portrait of Bonds.
Travers writes in an author's note that he originally approached Bonds about writing the slugger's autobiography. Bonds approved the opening of negotiations. However, the book is a biography. As with the Suchon book, there was no lengthy series of one-on-one interviews between Travers and Bonds.
But Travers' book does do a more well-rounded job of solving the mystery of who Bonds is. Quoting some information from ESPN's ''Sports- Century'' program on Bonds, he retraces Bonds' early roots back to his college career at Arizona State University to May 30, 1986, when the Pittsburgh Pirates brought him to the major leagues.
Travers spends much time trying to understand Bonds' personality. The infamous blowup between then-Pirates Manager Jim Leyland and Bonds is recounted, an incident Travers credits for helping straighten out Bonds, still a young, undisciplined talent.
Travers' tone isn't as polished as Suchon's. And several times he seems to wander from the point, as in one section where Travers discusses the seamier side of sports, without naming names. What does this have to do with Bonds, other than the fact that Bonds apparently concentrated more on his career?
Picking one book over the other is a tough call. Although Suchon's book covers a narrower territory, his day-by-day account is appealing. But so is the more inside look at Bonds in Travers' book.
Maybe it all comes down to this: At one point, Travers quotes an ESPN the Magazine interview with Bonds, who talks about his media image. It says a lot about what these two books represent.
''I think the fans only believe what they read. If you have a good relationship with the media, they'll write nice things about you and the public will admire you. But if you're your own person, and you just want to go to work and don't want that light in your face all the time, then they'll write you're standoffish or arrogant. Do they really know you? No. But they think they do through what they've read. I know how I'm perceived.''
