Mike Celizic

It’s become painful to watch, this quest of Barry Bonds.

If it were just your standard train wreck, it wouldn’t be nearly so stomach-churning. A train wreck is big and spectacular, but it’s also immediate and not a continuing process. You see it, gape and start cleaning up.

What’s happening to Bonds is far worse, both to watch and, we can presume, to live through. It’s more like an Old West wagon train that jauntily left Missouri full of vision and vigor and is now bogged down in the desert, starving oxen struggling to pull sun-scalded pioneers to a water hole that they hope hasn’t dried up.

What started with such high hopes has become a grueling ordeal. The end is in sight, but still too far distant to really comprehend. Tempers are ragged, nerves are shot, legs that feel as if they’re made of concrete and lead ache constantly, sun-fried brains don’t know whether to order the body to take another step or to just call for surrender to the elements, to admit defeat and die.

It wasn’t even two weeks ago that Bonds seemed to be back on track, just four away from tying Hank Aaron and five long flies away from the magic number of 756. He was at the All Star Game in his home park in San Francisco, charming a national audience and treating the media as if they were his dearest friends and confidantes.

It seems so long ago. Within a week, charm had turned to rage and disgust. A hitless streak grew to 21 at-bats. Claiming tired legs and on the verge of his 43rd birthday, Bonds declared himself unfit to play for three straight games in Chicago, forcing the crowd to get in their boos in the brief moments he appeared on the field before the game and during one pinch-hitting appearance.

The media were returned to their accustomed role as his adversaries. Earlier this week, he told the inquiring horde to get the bleep away from his locker. The only information he parted with was that he didn’t feel fit to wear the uniform of a professional baseball club — or even the uniform of the Giants.

I suppose we should have seen this coming. No matter how inevitable it seems that his one-man wagon train will ultimately reach that water hole, regain its energy and limp on to its destination, we had to know it wasn’t going to be easy.

It never is, it seems. Nearly every great record has left great scars on the person who has dared to take on the challenge.

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We saw it 46 years ago, when Roger Maris lost great clumps of hair nearly cracked under the pressure of chasing down Babe Ruth’s single-season record of 60 home runs. A number of players before him had come close, but they had been beaten back by the pressure; until Maris hit 61, no one else had managed more than 58.

And when Maris hit No. 61, the Lords of Baseball wanted to slap an asterisk on it in the record book because he had had 162 games to do it, eight more than the 154-game seasons Ruth had played.

The following year, when Maury Wills of the Dodgers took aim at Ty Cobb’s 37-year-old record of 96 stolen bases in a season, he, too, had to endure the pressure of a legend. Wills’ hips were massive bruises that made every slide an act of rash courage. Added to it was the pressure to avoid the Maris Syndrome and get the record inside of 154 games, which Wills did.

Pete Rose remains bitter to this day about the way his attempt to beat Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak ended. He had made it to 44 straight games, tying Willie Keeler’s National League record, but in Game 45, facing the Braves, he was hitless entering the ninth inning. Gene Garber got two strikes on him, then threw a slider that Rose missed for strike three, ending his quest.

Afterwards, Rose whined that Garber should have thrown him a fastball to give him a better chance of getting a hit instead of trying to get him out with the slider. He’s still whining.

Hank Aaron wasted little time in beating Babe Ruth’s career total of 714 home runs. He had 713 on Opening Day in Cincinnati in 1974 and on the first pitch he saw, he made it 714. In his third game at Atlanta’s home opener, he hit 715.

But even then, it hadn’t been easy. He received bushels of racist hate mail that included death threats. He’ll carry the scars of his quest to his grave.

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The lesson is that no one who tries to do what has never been done before gets off easy. Even Babe Ruth was bitterly criticized as something of a circus act when he started knocking balls out of ballparks at a rate never before dreamed of.

If Bonds hadn’t learned that lesson before this season, he’s learning it now. His swing, often described as the best in the game — maybe the best ever — has disintegrated under the pressure. His psyche is battered. His body is sore. His spirit neglected to even make the trip to Chicago.

It’s beyond ugly now, which makes it all the more fascinating; horrifying in its way, but impossible not to watch.

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