Bonds: 'Everything about me is negative' ... and the asterisk

"No question he's in better all-around shape," Giants general manager Brian Sabean says. "And he's in a better frame of mind than he was at the end of last year. That says a lot."

What we learned last year is that even Bonds*, in his baseball dotage, can no longer perform on cue. His march past Ruth was interminable, gobbling up most of the month of May.

That could happen again as he pursues Aaron. Because even though his body isn't currently betraying him, he's still 42, the hamstrings are tighter and who knows what potholes await in left field.

On the road, things look and sound much the same. He was lustily booed in all three games in San Diego this week (1-for-8, no homers in the series) -- though, unlike in last season's opening series in Petco Park, nobody tossed an oversized, toy syringe onto the field.

He scooped that up himself and tossed it away. Since then, baseball security officials have instructed Bonds* not to touch anything thrown onto the field.

So the only things he's picking up away from AT&T Park are the catcalls.

"I don't expect anything different," he says. "I'd be disappointed if it was different."

Through his first nine games in '07, Bonds* is hitting only .192 (5-for-26) with one home run and four RBI. He's at 735 career homers -- No. 2 all-time, of course; Aaron's at 755 -- and 2,846 career hits. He feels so good right now -- even if the numbers don't show it -- that he's not only taking aim at Aaron, he's ready to charge toward the 3,000-hit club, too.

"I want to get 3,000 hits for Willie (Mays)," Bonds said. "Willie doesn't think I can make it, so I'm going to make it. He thinks I can, but you know, he says I might have to keep playing another year. So I'm hacking at everything right now.

"So if I only have, like, about three walks at the end of the season, you'll know why. I'm just trying to get 3,000 hits. If I get that, I get Willie off my back. That's all I care about. That's my ghost. That's the love of my life, my dad and Willie. Everything else is irrelevant."

Well, maybe not everything else. Anybody who has paid attention learned a long time ago you can't believe everything Bonds* says.

Which is part of why he begins 2007 as close to an outcast as perhaps anybody ever poised to break one of the game's most important records. The sur-reality television show from last year is long gone. So is his entourage (the Giants made sure to spell that out in his new contract).

Where ESPN once regularly cut into programming to show his at-bats live, Tuesday's Giants-San Diego game, even locally, was shoved over to an auxiliary television channel in the Bay Area to make way for the San Jose Sharks NHL playoff game, of all things.

No doubt, Bonds* will become a hot ticket again 15 or so homers down the road, when he climbs within sight of No. 756.

For now, though, the "cancel my reservations" are registering loud and clear.

Assign as much or as little legitimacy to this quest as you will. Whatever, a snub from Aaron will diminish the feat, if only marginally. Bonds* maintains he doesn't care, and maybe he truly doesn't.

I did ask him Wednesday night, though, about one report out of Atlanta. In his Tuesday column in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Terence Moore quotes Aaron as saying, "The commissioner told me that (Bonds) has asked him several times why I haven't contacted him.'"

True?

"I've never talked to Bud, ever," Bonds* told me. "You know what this is all about. We don't even have to talk about it. It's all negative. Everything about me is negative.

"You know that, bro. I don't even care. My family is taken care of. I'm going to have a great life when this is all over."