MLB: A lifetime Giant? Not so fast.

February 20th was the start date for a happening in baseball that, frankly, I was shocked to hear. A superstar player voiced his unhappiness with his current contract. Just what is the world to when a man making an eight-figure salary playing baseball can’t get a little more?

There’s one little difference this time. I agree with the player.

San Francisco Giant left fielder Barry Bonds will be making $10.3 million dollars in the 2001 season, and he wants more. For Bonds, however, the more doesn’t mean a drastic increase in salary (though I am sure when the increase comes, it will be more than sufficient). What Bonds wants this time is something he surely deserves. He wants a guarantee from General Manager Brian Sabean that he will be a Giant for life. For now, Sabean just isn’t ready to guarantee anything.

Now, Barry Bonds has never been the epitome of a team player. One of the more quotable players in baseball, he has spent his time with reporters talking more about his statistics than his team’s chances of winning. No one can doubt, however, his contribution and importance to a team that has latched onto (willingly or not) the label of baseball’s “Little Team that Could.” Barry Bonds is San Francisco baseball, and for Sabean to say he is not ready to talk extension is an insult to the Bay Area’s biggest sports attraction since Joe Montana.

Sabean feels that getting a deal done before spring training ends would be difficult (due in part to Bonds’ agent Scott Boras), and that the Giants’ organization would be better served waiting until the year is over. The problem there is that Bonds is eligible for free agency at the end of the 2001 campaign, and when he gets a whiff of that free agent money, there may be no turning back.

True, Bonds is 36 years old and probably only has four or five years left in the league, but he proved he still has impact skills, rebounding from an injury ridden 1999 season to hit .306 and swat 49 homeruns for the Giants last season. He’s never proven himself to be a big time postseason player, but Giants fans would like to give him a few more chances to prove than he can be just that. I would bet they’d want to seem him do it in black and orange.

To not work out an extension with Bonds before the season, and thereby avoiding a side story that could plague the team all year, was a major mistake on the part of Sabean. Signing his star player to a four or five-year deal would prove to him, and to the Giants fans, that Bonds is what exactly what he thinks he is – the most revered and appreciated Bay Area athlete. The Giants will be serious contenders in 2001 and for some years to come, but they would be much more dangerous with number 25 patrolling left field for a few more years.