Mike Celizic

The San Francisco Giants not only wanted Barry Bonds off the team, they want nearly every reminder he ever played for the team out of the ballpark. It doesn’t seem a fitting way to treat the man who was the face of the franchise for 15 years.

The team, which decided not to re-sign the 43-year-old BALCO Bomber, has removed the big displays in the stadium celebrating his accomplishments. It will put up a plaque to mark the spot his 762^nd and final home run landed — not something anyone other than those in the immediate area will see.

"We're very respectful, at least I am, appreciative of all the contributions he made to the Giants over all that long period of time. But the time came when we needed to go in a new direction," said team president Peter McGowan. But he didn’t set a date for retiring Bonds’ number. To be completely accurate, he didn’t even bring the subject up.

I’m no fan of Bonds the man, but I still think it’s pretty shoddy. Bonds did nothing but what the team hired him to do. If he was getting a little help from his neighborhood chemist, the team — along with baseball — chose to ignore it. Anyway, he was hardly the only one.

This has nothing to do with anything Bonds took or didn’t take, nor does it have anything to do with the quality of his answers to questions put to him by a grand jury investigating BALCO. It doesn’t have anything to do with his lack of popularity outside of the Bay Area.

The statistics say Barry Bonds was one of the greatest players ever to pull on the Giants uniform going back to when they played in New York. He’s up there with Christy Mathewson and Iron Man McGinnity and Willie Mays, up there with the greatest ever to play for anybody.

It’s OK for people on the outside to start their reflex squawk right about now about chemically enhanced records. Inside the ballpark, the protests shouldn’t be audible. Bonds never did anything the Giants didn’t want him to do, anything they didn’t pay him quite handsomely to do.

They wanted home runs and he gave them more home runs than anybody ever gave anyone. They wanted to see fannies in the seats, and he made the turnstiles spin. The team — like the game itself — turned a blind eye to any evidence that the records he set weren’t squeaky clean.

Even when Bonds was up to his ginormous biceps in allegations and rumors, the Giants continued to employ him and continued to happily count the receipts from the crowds he drew to AT&T Park. And now they don’t even want to acknowledge the accomplishments that sold all those tickets?

The Giants look like an ex-spouse in a nasty divorce, opening the window on the 10th-floor condo and tossing the banished former partner’s belongings onto the sidewalk below. They look petty and mean and, above all, dishonest.

You can’t milk a personality for all he’s worth in ticket and memorabilia sales and then, when he’s no longer worth the investment pretend he didn’t exist. While he was playing, the Giants defended him and wrapped him up in a bear-hug embrace.

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I certainly don’t feel sorry for Bonds. He got as good as he gave, raking in tens of millions of dollars and enjoying the benefits for working for supportive employers. If he feels slighted now, I’ll let him deal with it.

But this isn’t really about a player. It’s about an accomplishment; it’s about the team’s own history. The Giants could have moved him long ago if they didn’t want to be stained by what many feel to be tainted records. But they kept him around, filled his coffers, catered to his whims, defended his moods and never, ever questioned how he was doing the things he did.

It’s a game of statistics, and Bonds’ are the best ever. The Giants front office glowed when he was setting them. It can’t now wish that he’d go away.

If Bonds is disgraced, the team must share in it. No one tried to chase his trainer out of the clubhouse. No one called in Bonds to ask about his incredible expanding physique. Nobody said anything except, “Keep it up, big guy.”

He defined the team as certainly as Ted Williams once defined the Red Sox, as Mickey Mantle once defined the Yankees, as Sandy Koufax once defined the Dodgers, and as Willie Mays — Bonds’ godfather — once defined the Giants.

That’s not a bond you can just wish away. Nor is it one you should wish away.

They asked him for history, no strings attached, and he gave it to them. The least they can do is say, “Thanks.”

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