Bonds wants A-Rod to surpass Mays' 660 HRs

Barry Bonds (left) is in Alex Rodriguez‘s corner. (USATI)

A lot of fans won’t care. Many won’t like it. Columnists will pontificate morally against it. The New York Yankees might go to court to contest an agreement they’ve with Alex Rodriguez since 2007 to pay him a $6 million for tying Willie Mays on the all-time home run list.

None of that matters to Barry Bonds. Now retired, Bonds says he’s rooting for A-Rod to catch and surpass his godfather, Willie (who’s like an uncle, really) at 660 home runs and beyond. It figures that Bonds would feel this way, not only because he could feel so much of the world rooting against him — before and after he caught Hank Aaron for the all-time record — but also because he has worked with Rodriguez, trying to help him get his stroke back following A-Rod’s biogenesis suspension.

Rodriguez, who turns 40 in July, is five home runs away from tying the “Say Hey” Kid, who is fourth all-time.

Of course Bonds is rooting for Rodriguez, he told Bob Nightengale of USA Today:

Barry Bonds (left) and Willie Mays after Aaron’s home run record fell. (USATI)

“My godfather means the world to me. I love him to a T,” Bonds told USA TODAY Sports in an hour-long telephone interview, “but when Alex hits No. 660, I’ll be happy for him. Willie will be happy for him. Everybody should be happy for him.

“Any time anybody in the game does something that’s a great accomplishment, the game of baseball should celebrate that.

“No matter what. Baseball is benefiting from that person’s hard work, so baseball should at least celebrate.”

But it won’t.

And neither will the Yankees.

“Why the hate?” Bonds said. “Why hate on something you’re paying to see? I don’t understand it. He’s entertaining us.

“I wish life wasn’t like that. […]

“And I can’t wait to until he hits 660. I know I’ll celebrate.”

You hear that, administrators of antagonism? Purveyors of pomposity. Meanies.

Mays is on the record as being… well, he’s not as excited about the possibility as Bonds is. Mays’s name is all over the record books and history books. But he’s not worried about A-Rod leaping over him on the home-run list, telling the New York Daily News:

“I don’t think I have any feeling about it at all,” Willie Mays told the Daily News, referring to A-Rod being five home runs shy of tying the Hall of Famer on the career list after swatting No. 655 Thursday night at Yankee Stadium.

“Records are there to be broken,” said Mays.

And Alex Rodriguez, like it or not world, is about overtake a legend.

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