Bonds Sees His Patience Put to Test

HOUSTON —  Barry Bonds failed to homer Tuesday night, but it was not as if history stood still.

It was merely slowed to a walk again.

In fact, Bonds drew two walks as his San Francisco Giants defeated the gasping Houston Astros, 4-1, and now, while still needing two home runs to eclipse Mark McGwire’s 1998 record of 70, he also needs only two more walks to eclipse Babe Ruth’s major league record of 170, set in 1923.

An intrepid reporter asked the San Francisco left fielder which he would prefer, the home run or walk record, if he had to choose.

“You can keep the walk record,” Bonds said. “I applied for a job to participate, not observe. But I also have a lot of confidence in the guys behind me [in the lineup] and a lot of confidence in this team, so you walk me, that’s fine with me.”

Playing his first game of the extended season in the launching pad that is Enron Field, where he homered four times in only 16 at bats last year, Bonds was challenged only by flame-throwing closer Billy Wagner in the ninth inning, grounding out on a 2-and-1 pitch.

Veteran Shane Reynolds, who was 4-0 in his last five starts at Enron and had walked only four batters in the 241/3 innings of his last four starts, hit Bonds on his right elbow pad with his second pitch in the first inning, walked him twice on nine pitches and gave up a single on a one-ball changeup that would have been ball two had Bonds not chased it.

“It’s not frustrating because I’ve been through it for a lot of years,” Bonds said of Houston’s basic refusal to challenge him. “It’s only frustrating if you’re not winning and not contributing.

“If you’re not pitched to, you have to take what they give you ... get on base, steal a base, score a run, play defense. In this situation, they have to do what they have to do and you have to do whatever they let you do.”

Nevertheless, Bonds said he was a little surprised the Astros hadn’t challenged him considering they have always done just that (“I’ve played against Houston for a long time and I’ve never known them to bypass anybody ... they’ve always been up for the challenge”), and because they had recently gone after Sammy Sosa, who slugged three home runs in one game, reminding the Astros, perhaps, that discretion remains the better part of valor.

“I mean, they pitched to a guy with 57 home runs and who plays in their division, so I just assumed they’d do the same to me,” Bonds said. “Obviously, I was wrong. I mean, Wagner challenged me, but Reynolds didn’t. I got the hit only because I swung at a changeup off the plate.”

An announced crowd of 43,548 booed the home team’s cautious approach to Bonds, but then the Astros, attempting to hold off the St. Louis Cardinals in the National League Central, need to win amid the ticking clock to the same extent that the Giants do.

Houston led the Cardinals by 51/2 games on Sept. 24 but they are now tied for the division lead with five games remaining, including a three-game showdown in St. Louis . Both teams are virtually assured of reaching the playoffs, but whichever emerges as the wild card will be forced to open on the road against either Arizona, with Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling, or San Francisco, with Bonds again disrupting pitching patterns.

The Astros need only one win to clinch a playoff berth but have lost five in a row and six of seven, scoring two runs or fewer five times.

General Manager Jerry Hunsicker shook his head before this latest setback and said he could not explain why his team suddenly “went in the tank, but we haven’t played like a championship team and we need to come out tonight and show that we are.”

It didn’t happen.

Four pitchers limited the Astros to eight hits, and the Giants chipped away for a run at a time in remaining two games behind the Diamondbacks in the West.

Of course, the races almost seem secondary to Bonds and his home run pursuit.

He has two games remaining here and three in San Francisco against the Dodgers, and the pattern of the last two games is unlikely to change. He has walked four times, been hit by pitches twice, seen only six strikes in nine plate appearances and swung the bat only four times.

Of course, when you’re about to break Ruth’s walk record and have an on-base percentage of more than .500, the pattern of the sixth and seventh months isn’t much different than that of the first.

“Regardless if they come at this point of time or the beginning of the season, 160-something walks is an enormous amount of walks,” Bonds said. “It take a lot of discipline and concentration to work through all of that, but I’ve had a lot of practice at it. I’ve also had no choice. If they’re not pitching to you, they’re not pitching to you.”

Houston Manager Larry Dierker said he expected Bonds to see enough strikes “between now and the end of the season that he’ll have a legitimate chance to break the record and I expect him to do it. The guy’s hitting .300, but he still makes a lot of outs and I think there’s a lot of situations when you have to try and get him out, but we’re not going to groove anything.

“Our main goal is to win and we’ll continue to pitch him carefully as we did in San Francisco [while sweeping a three-game series]. He walked a few times, we got him out a few times and he hit one home run. If he does that in this series I’ll be happy. “

The Astros may be losing their grip on happiness. They have three pitchers--Roy Oswalt, Pedro Astacio and Carlos Hernandez--nursing injuries, and their generally potent offense is struggling.

In a close game, Reynolds said, he wasn’t going to give Bonds anything that might reward Commissioner Bud Selig for his trip to Houston.

“If we had a big enough lead, maybe I would have given him something to hit and not walked him,” Reynolds said.

“But with the situation the way it was there was no way I was going to give him a pitch he could drive out of the park. I wasn’t going to let that happen, not now, no way.”