Strange Brew
The Bonds-Selig-Aaron Saga Hits Home in Milwaukee

By Dave Sheinin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 21, 2007

MILWAUKEE, July 20 -- It is not exactly a love triangle that binds Barry Bonds, Bud Selig and Hank Aaron together, although there certainly is some affection flowing in various directions between certain vertices.

Selig, the commissioner of baseball, unabashedly adores Aaron, the all-time home run champion, and Aaron presumably admires Selig, though less publicly so. Bonds, too, reveres Aaron and over the years has sought ways to gain favor with him -- attempts that, by all accounts, have failed.

Instead, as Bonds brought his pursuit of Aaron's record to Milwaukee -- Selig's home town and the city where Aaron's career began and ended -- it is not love but love's opposite forces that are under scrutiny within the Bonds-Selig-Aaron relationship.

On Friday night, the 31st anniversary of Aaron's 755th and final homer, Bonds was in his customary cleanup spot in the San Francisco Giants' lineup, playing left field, as the team opened a three-game series against the Milwaukee Brewers at Miller Park. Bonds entered the game with 753 career home runs, two shy of tying Aaron's hallowed mark, and went 0 for 4 with a walk in the Giants' 8-4 win.

In attendance Friday night, in a luxury suite he keeps all season but seldom uses himself, was Selig, his mere presence -- and what it might symbolize regarding his feelings toward Bonds -- causing a midgame stir in the press box.

"My office is four or five miles from here," Selig said, seeking to play down the symbolism. "And the best part of my job is being able to go to a ballgame. And it's a meaningful game, and I'm glad to be here."

Despite, or perhaps because of, a media contingent that has swelled in the aftermath of the two homers Bonds hit Thursday in Chicago, Bonds did not speak to reporters prior to Friday night's game. However, on Thursday, in response to a question about visiting Milwaukee, with its Selig and Aaron ties, Bonds said, "It doesn't mean anything different than anywhere else."

According to Giants Manager Bruce Bochy, Bonds is likely to play either Saturday or Sunday, but not both. The Giants then will return to San Francisco for a seven-game homestand beginning Monday night.

Selig, meantime, said he likely would attend the games Saturday and Sunday as well, but would not make a decision on whether to continue following Bonds until Aaron's record is broken.

Selig associates believe he has been withholding his plans because there always was a chance Bonds could fail to break the record -- whether because of injury, or a grand jury indictment or some other unforeseen development.

The New York Daily News, citing several sources familiar with the case, reported in Saturday's editions that the grand jury investigating Bonds has been extended for another six months, and that the U.S. attorney's office in San Francisco is confident it will have enough evidence to secure an indictment once it resumes in September.

Regardless, now that it appears inevitable the record will fall, Selig will soon make public that he will attempt to attend the record-breaker, schedule permitting.

Asked if he had spoken to Bonds recently, Selig paused to consider the question as if hearing it for the first time. "Not for a long time," he said. Why not? "It's just the way it's worked out."

Occupying the third leg of the triangle is Aaron, who, unlike Selig, long ago made plain his intention to avoid Bonds's record-breaking homer -- at one point joking, "I don't even know how to spell his name."

His Milwaukee days long behind him, Aaron now lives in Atlanta, works for the Atlanta Braves and seldom visits Milwaukee, a concession more to age -- Aaron is 73 -- than anything else.

Still, according to Selig, even in absentia Aaron remains a towering presence in Milwaukee.

"Hank Aaron is not only an American icon, but he's huge in Milwaukee and throughout Wisconsin," Selig said in a telephone interview Thursday. "When Hank is here, if you were to walk down the street with him, you wouldn't believe it."

Aaron was last in Milwaukee on June 7 for a ceremony to dedicate a plaque commemorating his 755th homer, and he is expected back in August to attend a reunion of the Milwaukee Braves' 1957 World Series championship team.

Aaron "used to come in [to Milwaukee] a lot," said Houston Astros Manager Phil Garner, who managed the Brewers from 1992 to '99, when Selig still owned the team. "But it was basically because of Bud Selig. Hank was there more as a baseball liaison than anything else, more in an official role than as an honored guest."

Selig first grew fond of Aaron from a distance, as a young man and Braves fan in Milwaukee in the 1950s, then came to know him personally when Selig, a local businessman, became involved in the team as its largest public stockholder. Selig often boasts of having witnessed Aaron's first home run in 1954 and his final one in 1976.

"I've known Hank for 50 years," Selig said Thursday. "He is one of the most gracious, dignified people I know. And he was always that way. He's a great fan. He's the same wonderful person he was 50 years ago. I have a lot of personal affection for him, an enormous amount of respect."

If Milwaukee fans have any special animosity for Bonds, who has come to town to demolish their favored son's sacred record, it was not evident Friday night. Bonds's at-bats were greeted by a familiar mixture -- call it six parts booing, one part cheering -- that remains mostly unchanged from city to city when the Giants are on the road. If anything, Brewers fans were more polite than most, in a Midwestern sort of way.

It was like that, too, with Selig, perhaps the most passionate baseball fan in all of Wisconsin and the great Midwest. Asked during Friday night's game if he would consider Bonds's record legitimate, Selig demurred politely.

"I won't get into that," he said. "We're here to watch, to see whether he does it. And I'm not passing judgment on that, nor should I. . . . I know what I feel. I know what I think. But I can't. . . . "

Here, Selig cut himself off.

"I'm here," he said softly, "and I think it's the right thing to do."