A giant among Giants but to Barry Bonds it's all about bucks

This, for me, is American sporting perfection. It is a perfect late summer's afternoon in a beautiful baseball arena: the San Francisco Giants' new bayside stadium (complete with stands selling chardonnay, organic fruit and garlic fries; there are whole states where the catering is less varied).

The place is packed for a thrilling and vital encounter against the champions of baseball, the Arizona Diamondbacks. And there at the plate is perhaps the greatest of all contemporary American sportsmen: Barry Bonds, the man who last year captured the sport's most resonant record, the number of home runs in a season. Every boy in the country once knew that was Babe Ruth's 60. Now it is Barry Bonds' 73.

I could not take my eye off the man. He does everything at a pace that might be termed a lazy strut, a gait that can be perfected only by someone very, very sure of his ability. He also has the air of a man who is perpetually angry about something but cannot quite remember what, like Viv Richards used to be on a really bad day.

Then came the moment when he took out his aggression on the ball. Bonds unleashed his trademark pull, hit left-handed over deep right field and into the blue waters of San Francisco Bay. A flotilla of small boats then raced to grab it. Bonds acknowledged the cheers like a monarch receiving tribute.

Bonds' hitting has kept the Giants in the one exciting race of a flat baseball season, overshadowed by the threatened strike that almost caused the whole thing to be cancelled. Seven of the eight play-off places are almost assured but the Giants and their hated rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers, are scrapping fiercely for the final wild-card berth. The Giants last made the World Series in 1989, an occasion best remembered for the huge earthquake minutes before their first home game was due to start. I certainly remember it; I was there.

If it happens, Bonds may at last, at 39, share in a collective honour worthy of his brilliance. It will also bring to national attention the other remarkable fact about him: that he is regarded by team-mates, opponents, journalists, even (the word goes) by his own manager, as a complete toad - arrogant, egotistical and paranoid.

This may disguise a strange vulnerability. He grew up with expectations: his father, Bobby, was a Giant of the 60s whose own shot at greatness was wrecked by booze and drugs. The whispers, denied of course, connect Barry with different kinds of drugs.

The numbers of nearly all the big sluggers are down this year, partly because the authorities have altered the ball and partly because the whispers have become deafening that those home runs have come from muscles way beyond anything God or the gymnasium intended. "Barry's on 'roids," shout opposing fans.

This year Bonds is down to 44 homers, about half of them into the bay. But he has done something else amazing instead. He has started hitting singles and has a batting average way ahead of anyone else. This is novel: great batters are either reliable Boycotts or shit-or-bust Bothams. Bonds is now both.

But still he seems to bring out the worst in people. Jeff Kent, the Giants' second best player, is famously affable; he and Bonds despise each other. It even affects the spectators. In baseball the fan who catches the ball keeps it. The man who caught the historic ball hit by Mark McGwire, holder of the home run record before Bonds, gave the ball away and with it a possible fortune.

Last week a judge was trying to adjudicate on the fate of No73 from last year, caught and then dropped in the crowd by one Alex Popov. He is battling Patrick Hayashi, who emerged with it from the resulting scrum. "When you get your hands on it, that is a catch, that is possession," said Popov's lawyer. "No it isn't," said the judge, who does a lot of drugs trials. "I put people in prison for possession and the kilo was in the next room."

The case goes before a jury next month, just about the time Bonds and the Giants might or might not be contending for the World Series. It all fits well with Bonds' view that baseball is no game. "It's a business," he insists. In the Californian sunshine, though, it is easier than usual to maintain a few illusions.