It was a great day for Barry Bonds before he hit home run No. 660 into the water beyond the right-field brick wall on Monday. After being booed and taking his lumps in Houston and in San Diego, Bonds returned home and was showered with love. Not only from his family, but from his fans.
The SBC Park capacity crowd of 42,548 gave Bonds two standing ovations before the home opener started. The third standing ovation came in the fifth inning, when Bonds turned on a 3-1 inside fastball from Milwaukee's Matt Kinney and hit a 442-foot home run that tied his godfather, Willie Mays, for third on baseball's career home run list. Everyone at SBC Park knew the ball was gone the second he hit it, and Bonds immediately threw up his arms and let out a big sigh.
''It is great to be home,'' Bonds said after the Giants' 7-5 victory. ''This is the best feeling right now, the icing on the cake. It was like a weight was lifted off of my shoulders.''
The three-run homer gave San Francisco a 5-4 lead, and Bonds finished the day 3 for 3 with four runs batted in and a walk.
''They gave him one pitch all day that he could pull, and the big guy was ready for it,'' Giants Manager Felipe Alou said.
Bonds had 24 at-bats since his last homer, last Monday at Houston, a drought of sorts that kept Mays on his first road trip in 30 years. Mays had wanted to present Bonds with a shiny torch that he received when he ran a leg in the 2002 Olympics torch run and embellished with diamonds that said 660 and 661. He watched the games in Houston and San Diego on television from the equipment rooms in the visiting clubhouse.
On Monday, he saw the blast from the Giants' equipment room, grabbed his torch, met Bonds five feet from the dugout and passed it to him. Mays held it while the two posed for photographs and soaked up another round of applause as the game was interrupted.
The homer was Bonds's fourth in five home openers here.
Bonds was first applauded when the lineups were announced, then again when Wayne Gretzky and Bill Russell presented Bonds with his sixth Most Valuable Player award. Gretzky and Bonds are two of the four athletes in the four major pro sports to win six M.V.P. awards, along with Gordie Howe and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Russell, the star center with the Boston Celtics and the University of San Francisco, won five.
''Barry is one of the great athletes of all time,'' Gretzky said.
Russell was close friends with Bonds's father, Bobby, and said that he wanted to honor both.
