The Last Hero: A Life of Henry Aaron (74 page)

Around the same time, Tollin had been executive producer of
Arli$$
, the HBO comedy series that starred Robert Wuhl as a high-powered sports agent and featured cameos by numerous professional athletes. During the show’s first two seasons, 1996 and 1997, Bonds agreed to appear, and he impressed Tollin and Wuhl (who was also an executive producer) with his professionalism and surprising seriousness and perfectionism. What impressed Wuhl most was the time Bonds was on the set and a particular scene had not been done to anyone’s satisfaction. At the time, Bonds was represented by Dennis Gilbert, and Gilbert reminded Bonds they had another appointment, a lucrative commercial for a high-powered client. They were late, he said, and would have to cut the filming short. But Bonds remained while all the necessary takes were shot and the scene was correct. Wuhl and Tollin never forgot that side of Bonds. Tollin, especially, believed it was an untapped side of Bonds that could be mined.

Now, years later, Rachael Vizcarra was calling on behalf of Barry Bonds. It was during the off-season before the 2006 season and Bonds stood at 708 career home runs. He had missed nearly the entire 2005 season due to an injury, but he came back to hit five home runs in fourteen September games. The strong finish gave the impression that Bonds would hit not only the seven homers he needed to pass Ruth in 2006 but also, the forty-eight he needed to pass Aaron to become the all-time leader.

The conversation was brief.
³¹⁹
Tollin mostly listened carefully, waiting for the upshot. And then, finally, he heard it: “Barry wants you to do for him what you did for Hank Aaron,” Vizcarra told him.

Tollin was intrigued. As a next step in the process, he requested a meeting with Bonds. A few weeks later, the two met alone in Los Angeles at the apartment Bonds kept in the fashionable Wilshire Corridor. He actually kept two condominiums, one as an office, the other as a residence for when he was in town. During their talks, it seemed that Bonds was almost auditioning for the show Tollin had in mind. He told Tollin stories about growing up, about how abusive his father, Bobby Bonds, had been. He talked about the unfair treatment baseball had levied upon Bobby, and how his father’s alcoholism in part could be traced to how poorly he had been treated by the game. Bonds took Tollin through the condo and Tollin found himself intrigued by Bonds’s range of interests. He was interested in photography and Wall Street, movies and technology, and was in the process of a new project: a photo montage for his daughter.

The discussions proceeded in earnest.
³²⁰
Tollin wanted to know if Bonds was serious about moving forward. The project, he said, would not be hagiography: There were going to be controversial topics, such as the drug issues that swirled around him. Bonds said he was in the right frame of mind to proceed.

Tollin had been concerned about artistic integrity, and thus he demanded he have the final cut. Bonds had a few requests of his own, one of them being Henry’s participation. Would Henry Aaron be part of the program at some point? he asked.

After the meetings, Tollin was convinced he had sufficient cooperation from Bonds—and enough of a creative vision—to produce a compelling work. His vision was a singular one-hour reality-television special on Bonds. Bonds, of course, would be the star, and Tollin’s challenge would be to present him in a dimension different from what Bonds believed to be the incorrect public perception of him.

Then Tollin followed up with another mantra that came from doing business in Hollywood: First you get the goods, and then you figure out where to sell them. ESPN was a natural, and the network was immediately interested. Tollin agreed to veer from his original concept and film a full-season miniseries. The title Tollin wanted
—I’m Barry Bonds and You’re Not—
was a nod to the seminal 1993
Sports Illustrated
cover story. ESPN’s choice
—Bonds on Bonds—
would be the title.

They made the deal, and then Tollin prepared for what he expected to be an interesting phone call—apprising Henry of the project. They had a good conversation, Tollin recalled, and Henry appreciated that Tollin showed him respect by asking him, in effect, to bless the project. But Henry was not interested. “I told him it wasn’t about me taking sides. It was a chance as a filmmaker to tell a compelling story. Henry was typically gracious. Implicit in the message was that he didn’t mind me doing it, but he didn’t want any part of it.”

B
ONDS WAS A
polarizing figure, but also a fascinating one. John Skipper and John Walsh, two of the ESPN top executives who gave the show the green light, were enthusiastic and prepared to swat away the internal and external concerns that a reality-television show on Bonds would compromise the news operation. Walsh was particularly fascinated by Bonds, and according to intimates, he did not feel Bonds had ever been covered properly. After all, not only was Bonds bearing down on the home-run record but he was also being investigated by the federal government for perjury. Tollin and ESPN, so went the criticism, were providing a public-relations forum for a bad guy desperate to rehabilitate his image. Yet there was something of value to the show: Tollin had exclusive interviews with Barry Bonds during the season, Bonds in his own words … and nobody else had that.

That exclusivity, it turned out, would be the leverage that would ultimately destroy the show after ten episodes. Like a good-natured woman who really
believes
she can change that troubling, intriguing man she’s fallen for, Tollin found out what so many people before him had discovered: There was no working with Barry Bonds.

The show debuted April 4, 2006. As the show progressed beyond the first few episodes, it was clear that Bonds believed the interviews gave him the upper hand over Tollin and the network. Tollin had already sensed possible trouble when, during the early blueprinting of the show, Bonds made Tollin sign a confidentiality agreement, opening him up to a multimillion-dollar lawsuit should he discuss anything that took place behind the scenes.

And then came the moment that, to Mike Tollin, said it all. Bonds had wanted Henry to be part of the project, and Tollin had an idea. If Bonds and Tollin split the cost of sponsoring a Hank Aaron scholar—roughly $25,000 apiece—Henry would most likely agree to a Chasing the Dream scholarship in the Bay Area. But Bonds just didn’t get it. According to intimates, Bonds wanted nothing to do with the charity.

Later, Tollin signed a fifty-million-dollar movie deal for
Wild Hogs
, a John Travolta–Martin Lawrence comedy vehicle, and he told Bonds that another producer, Fred Golding, would be taking on some of the show’s duties. It was during this time that Bonds attempted in meetings to take more control over the direction of the show, which Tollin believed was in direct violation of their deal. The show was supposed to be independent, and now Bonds was trying to dictate the content during weekly planning meetings. Tollin went to ESPN, but the show was at an impasse. Bonds continued exerting control and the relationship soured. ESPN provided Tollin with an escape hatch and canceled the show.

Ultimately, the show fell flat for other reasons. Ratings were poor. Tollin believed Bonds felt betrayed over
Wild Hogs
. Yet there were a few moments he was proud of. The show captured Bonds’s 715th homer, when he passed Ruth’s record. After that game, Tollin went into the clubhouse to congratulate Bonds, who signed a ball for Tollin’s son, Luke. The inscription was classic Bonds. “To Luke, God Bless Barry Bonds.” Tollin always wondered with a certain amount of humor if the omitted comma was intentional.

And worst of all for the show, the dynamic, electric Bonds, who was expected to chase the home-run record with a fury, was hardly electric. He was a haggard old man, a sagging forty-two-year-old who, like most forty-two-year-olds still playing professional sports, accumulated numbers for a living. He could hit … occasionally. He couldn’t run. He couldn’t field his position.

“There’s a heart beating there,
³²¹
but there are so many layers. I think the hardship growing up with his dad and Willie starts with mistrust,” Tollin recalled. “They would tell him, ‘You’re better off without those people, and it’s up to you to find out who those people are.’

“It was a shame. We could have made a nice show, but it became a test of wills, which wasn’t what it was all about,” he said. “This was his deification. So that was that. We’d rather walk away and prove to the media that we insisted on creative integrity. I saw Barry at the premiere. He was friendly. No hard feelings. It was a case of moving on. I’m not in touch with him.”

T
HE
G
IANTS DESPERATELY
wanted Henry to participate in the Bonds coronation. It wasn’t just that a nod from Henry would give class and dignity and legitimacy to the whole sordid affair, perhaps soften the public mood that the record would always contain a steroid taint if Bonds surpassed Henry. The other reason was Henry’s potential influence on Bonds himself. Perhaps having Henry involved would propel Barry into a feeling of magnanimity. Inside the Giant organization, everyone knew the real fiction surrounding Bonds was that his blood feud was a solo affair between himself and the press. That always made people who worked for the Giants laugh. The real truth was that Bonds treated Giants employees as badly as he did the writers. In some cases, certain Giants employees thought, the writers had it easier than club employees, because at least the writers could leave. They could get away from Bonds. The writers could retreat to the press box or the field or anyplace where Barry was not. They only had to deal with Bonds the player for about three hours per day. Maybe having Henry on board would give Bonds more incentive to enjoy the journey toward history. Maybe it would make Barry be nice, just for a month.

Of course, Larry Baer did not know that Bonds had already insulted Henry, and Henry Aaron wouldn’t have gone to San Francisco in a million years for ten million bucks.

But Baer was persistent. Susan Bailey, upon orders from Henry and Allan Tanenbaum, was an even more ferocious gatekeeper than normal as Bonds approached the record. “Susan wouldn’t even let most people finish
³²²
their sentences,” Tanenbaum recalled. That made one of the stories floating around—that the television network Fox had offered Henry $250,000
per day
to travel with Bonds once Bonds came within a home run of 755—virtually impossible.

“I know that story wasn’t true for two reasons,” Tanenbaum said. “The first was that nobody could even get to Henry during those final three weeks. The second was that Henry had already said he had no interest in this. No amount of money was going to get him to change his mind.”

Baer, though, slipped through the protective shield once, to the fury of Bailey and Tanenbaum, reaching Henry at home and asking him one final time if he would fly to San Francisco for Bonds. The Giants would cover the tab, naturally: flights, hotels, meals, transportation … everything first-class.

Henry said no.

That didn’t stop Baer, who, at the league’s New York offices, met with Henry and Tim Brosnan and John Brody, two members of the MLB Properties division. At that meeting, Baer told Henry he was interested in having him explain his position. Why, Baer asked, was he being so vague about his plans? Henry told Baer he did not judge Bonds but that as a seventy-three-year-old man he had no interest in following another baseball player around. He’d had his time as the record holder, he told Baer, and he wished Barry well, but he was not interested.

“Would you at least consider a taping?”
³²³
Baer recalled asking, fully expecting a no. “Would you tape a congratulatory message we could show on the video board whenever he breaks the record?”

“That, I could do,” Henry said.

To Henry’s recollection, he had not completely committed. To Baer, Henry was on board.

Baer sprang into action. He prepared a film crew to fly to Georgia to tape Henry. He even wrote the script, telling Henry just what to say. Henry informed Baer he would do the video but that he would write the words himself … and he added a special caveat: Should anything “extraordinary” occur during the time between the taping and the day Bonds broke the record, he reserved the right to prohibit the Giants from airing the video. That something “extraordinary,” as everyone knew, was the federal indictment for perjury that had hung over Bonds for three years.

For weeks, the video sat in a vault in the Braves offices. When Baer finally received the video—which arrived when Bonds was two home runs away from the record—he did not tell anyone he had snared the great and reticent Henry Aaron, Bonds included. The only people who knew, apart from the principals, were the scoreboard operators (who had to be sure the tape was compatible with their systems) and the commissioner’s office, which had had a hand in brokering the deal.

A
UGUST 7,
2007, SBC Park: fifth inning, one out. In his first two at bats, Bonds had doubled and singled against Mike Bacsik, the Washington Nationals pitcher. The day before, Bacsik had fielded the inevitable questions of what it would be like to serve up the record-breaking home run. “I dreamed about this moment since I was a kid,” he said. “Except I was the one hitting the homer, not giving it up.”

The record had turned into a slog, a forty-three-year-old antihero playing for nothing but himself, in joyless pursuit of a record only he wanted broken. The Giants were in last place and would stay there. If there was any suspense at all, it was about whether Bonds would be indicted before he broke the record, and, if so, whether Bud Selig would suspend Bonds immediately and save the record, an eleventh-hour clemency not so much for Henry but for the relentless assault of performance-enhancing drugs on his sport.