While spirited fans watched and judged, cheered and jeered, Barry Bonds took their breath away with the homer that tied Hank Aaron's alltime record

Extra batting practice paid off for Bonds when he hit home run number 755 off Hensley in the second inning last Saturday in San Diego. Robert Beck/SI

By Chris Ballard

It was a simple act by a beleaguered man, one that brought together a country while dividing it, one that ended a vigil just as it began another. The 755th home run of Barry Bonds's career was not especially different from hundreds that came before. He kept his right shoulder in, waited on a fastball as it sliced high over the plate and, in one tight, powerful motion, redirected the baseball some 380 feet into the twilight sky, where it crashed off a concrete facing in the leftfield bleachers at Petco Park in San Diego and caromed into a forest of upraised arms below. The details have been recorded: the pitcher who gave it up (Clay Hensley), the date (Aug. 4, 2007, 21 years after Hank Aaron hit his 755th) and the reaction from the 42,000-plus fans (a standing ovation by most, boos by some). What it means, and how it makes us feel -- that is more complicated.

That Bonds would tie Aaron's home run record was inevitable; predicting when it would happen was the trick. So for a thick slice of our summer, we lived on Western Barry Time, and whether we did so out of loyalty, disdain or boredom, the slow-motion chase nonetheless provided a connective tissue. Nothing was mundane. Each groundout and base on balls was thick with possibility. Then on July 27, after he hit number 754 at AT&T Park, the Barry Watch went live; one to tie, two for the show. And so it was that the final leg of the chase began as the Giants embarked on a six-game road trip through the enemy territory of Los Angeles and San Diego, played out to a sound track of "Ster-Oids" chants and machine-gunning camera shutters. It was a fevered, surreal swing through Southern California, one that began with one man atop the alltime home run list and ended with two.

The record-tying home run was launched in San Diego, but it was forged earlier in the week in Los Angeles, where Bonds's anxiety reached its peak as an entire city seemed to crush in on him. You could feel it on the 110 freeway, where a snaking line of steel stretched from downtown to the Dodger Stadium exit ramp on game nights, so many Escalades and Suburbans and Acuras and tricked-out Hondas revving and baking in the late-afternoon sun. The backup was such that the wife of Dodgers outfielder Luis Gonzalez left home at her usual hour on the first night of the series but didn't get to her seat until the fourth inning.

The atmosphere was electric, a heady brew of anticipation, opportunism, inebriation and animosity; one L.A. talk-radio host wondered if there would be violence. There wasn't, but there was plenty of vitriol. With Bonds's every appearance, the boos came loud and lusty, toppling down and echoing around Chavez Ravine. They were even louder when, as happened five times during the series, Bonds was walked. Los Angelenos did not pay up to four times face value for their tickets, did not dress up in their Entourage finest of mirrored sunglasses and designer jeans, to watch the Dodgers bow down to this old man and send him to first base. So, Booooo they roared at their own manager, Booooo they roared at their own team, even as it was fighting to win a division race. Rarely have so many cared so much about someone they professed to loathe. It's a stance that former Dodger Milton Bradley sums up as "impossibly hypocritical."

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