It has been the perfect, symbiotic relationship.
Barry Bonds helped the San Francisco Giants build a fan base and a new stadium, helped them reach the World Series and put untold millions of dollars into the pockets of the club's owners.
San Francisco gave Bonds $172-million (all currency U.S.) over the past 15 years and, as important, a haven. The team allowed him to play by different rules in the clubhouse, gave him all of that extra space, that famous easy chair, and the city, when it seemed as though the whole sports world had turned against him, offered him affection almost without qualification.
As with so many great love affairs, it didn't make much sense to outsiders. Wasn't one, or the other, or both, being used?
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But until last week, they had eyes only for each other. Their imminent parting, announced last week on Bonds's website, isn't the result of a big blow-up or of the scales falling from someone's eyes. Instead, it is being framed as a kind of sad inevitability, something neither party really wants, but at the same time just can't avoid.
If the real bottom line is a little chillier — the Giants can't justify paying Bonds's salary any more in terms of the revenue he'll generate, and don't think they can milk his quest for 3,000 hits the way they milked the chase for the home-run record — well, that's showbiz, isn't it?
And surely, since talk-show pundits and newspaper columnists have spent the past several years reminding everyone of what a bad guy Bonds is, about how he's poison in the dressing room, and especially about the fact that he's a (technically unproven, and neither charged nor convicted) cheater, since fans in other cities have greeted him with boos and pictures of giant syringes, no one else in the game is going to touch him, right?
Surely a team like the St. Louis Cardinals couldn't even think about it. Not now that they have their own comeback hero to celebrate in plucky Rick Ankiel. And the Blue Jays, with slugging Troy Glaus in the lineup (at least he was until quietly slipping out the back door for that suddenly urgent foot surgery) would never go near a tainted pariah like Bonds.
Ah, yes, there's the rub.
Even as Bonds has been the convenient whipping boy, the player who in Bud Selig's wildest dreams is baseball's one bad apple, evidence continues to pile up that the dirty business of performance-enhancing drugs might be just a touch more widespread in the national pastime.
And if Bonds is just one more doper in what may yet be revealed to resemble the Tour de France with bats and gloves, it makes it a whole lot easier for teams looking for a little boost at the gate and in the batter's box to sell him to their fans.
It's not over yet, because Bonds can still hit and can still play enough outfield that a National League team might even take a run at him as a free agent. But his obvious destination would be the junior circuit, where, as a designated hitter, he could continue to add to his home-run total, amass the 65 hits necessary to reach 3,000 and make an entire other league a sunnier place.
Oakland, because of the forgiving Bay Area fans, would make all kinds of sense. Texas, because it has an owner who loves to spend money, is another possible destination. Bonds could wind up in Anaheim or Seattle, or maybe even with the New York Yankees if they lose A-Rod, though that kind of convergence might be too much for anyone to endure.
There were those who figured he'd be in jail before he ever broke Henry Aaron's record. There were those who thought that once the Giants had tired of him, baseball would happily turn its back on Barry Bonds and all that he represents. Certainly, no franchise would risk alienating its consumer base by signing him.
The feds still haven't made their case, probably never will, and more to the point, times change, knowledge expands, false innocence is lost, the true picture emerges and buyers start lining up.
Sometimes it happens all of a sudden, and sometimes it can take a whole lot longer. Just ask Ben Johnson.
