Barry Bonds hits a home run in the fourth inning. (AP photo) | ZOOM |

        Barry Bonds isn't satisfied yet. He waited 16 years for this moment and when it arrived, it still wasn't enough.

        Octobers came and went, passing him by. He had all those homers, but there was something Homeric about his struggles in the playoffs, as if unseen gods were teasing and testing him.

        Bonds' face didn't reveal the strain. He didn't seem to be pressing at the plate. He wasn't chasing pitches or pacing the dugout.

        He was relaxed, laughing, kidding around before his San Francisco Giants played Game 5 Monday night against the Atlanta Braves at Turner Field.

        Then, when it came time to play, Bonds came up big in the biggest game of his life.

        For the first time in his career, Bonds tasted a playoff series victory, his single and home run leading the Giants past the Braves 3-1 and into the National League championship series against St. Louis.

        Beaming, Bonds celebrated on the field briefly with his teammates, then put the game in perspective.

        “It's not over yet,” Bonds said. “I want to win the World Series. It's just the beginning.”

        Bonds entered the game with his dreadful numbers — a .198 career average in the postseason, 3-for-14 in these playoffs — no championship rings on his fingers. He had hit two homers this series and another that missed by inches, but he hadn't made the impact on the games that everyone anticipated.

        This time, Bonds seized the moment.

        On the first pitch he saw from Kevin Millwood, he lined a single to left leading off the second inning. Bonds then took second on a groundout and gave the Giants a 1-0 lead on Reggie Sanders' single.

        Leading off the fourth, Bonds took Millwood to a full count, then crushed his third homer of the series, an opposite-field shot deep into the left-center stands for a 2-0 Giants lead.

        Bonds popped out to center in the sixth and walked in the eighth. He tried to make something happen again, but was caught stealing.

        “Sometimes it's not fair,” Giants teammate Rich Aurilia said before the game. “You have the expectations of him going out every day and hitting a home run or getting three or four hits, and that's not always going to happen.

        “Barry actually hit the ball really well this series. Sometimes you can't tell by the numbers how a person is hitting the ball, but he's hit the ball well.”

        Aurilia was right. Bonds finished this series with a respectable .294 average.

        Bonds didn't have to prove anything to anyone. He had done almost everything a ballplayer could do, topping his incredible 73 homers last year with an almost equally incredible .370 average and National League batting title this year at the age of 38.

        Only Hank Aaron, Babe Ruth and his godfather, Willie Mays, stood ahead of him in career home runs. He already owns a record four MVPs, and next month he will get his fifth.

        If Bonds' teams never win a pennant or World Series, he will still be in the Hall of Fame. And he won't be the only player there without a championship.

        Ralph Kiner, Ernie Banks, Rod Carew, Luke Appling — they're among the 23 players in the hall who never won a World Series.

        Some of the greatest athletes in many sports have had their failings. Dan Marino played in only one Super Bowl and lost that. Elgin Baylor never played on an NBA championship team. Bjorn Borg won everything but the U.S. Open. Pete Sampras suffered every year at the French. Phil Mickelson is still searching for his first Grand Slam title.

        Two of the greatest hitters in baseball were hardly heroic in the World Series. Ted Williams hit only .200 in his one Series, in 1946. In Ty Cobb's three consecutive World Series, starting in 1907, he hit .200, .368 and .231.

        In a short series, even the best hitters can be handcuffed or pitched around. Still, Joe DiMaggio, a .325 lifetime hitter in the regular season, batted only .271 in 51 World Series games. That included .231 in 1947 and .111 in 1949.

        This was Bonds' sixth trip to the playoffs, and in the first five his teams had never won a series. Some critics pointed to Bonds, saying he was as much to blame as anyone on his teams. Which was true, but not quite fair. Bonds wasn't a choker in the playoffs. He just hadn't come up big in the chances he got.

        “It's not that he can't get a hit in the big game, it's that sometimes the ball just doesn't bounce your way,” said Gary Sheffield of the Braves, his longtime friend.

        “I think he tried to take the whole series in his hands. You have only one at-bat at a time. If you don't capitalize on that at-bat each time, it affects the whole lineup. If your big guy is not coming through, then it puts a lot of pressure on the other guys.”

        Bonds learned from his past and tried not to take the whole series in his hands this time. He let go of the pressure and watched his moment come at last.

        ———

        Steve Wilstein is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at swilstein@ap.org

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