Lightning rod Bonds ties career home-run record

Playing at PetCo Park in San Diego, California against the host Padres, Bonds led off the second inning. With a 2-1 count against San Diego starting pitcher Clay Hensley, the left-handed batter swatted a fastball into the left-field bleachers.

After swinging, Bonds dropped his bat at home plate, began walking toward first base and pumped his fist once the ball had left the park, knowing he had tied Hall of Famer Hank Aaron's record of 755 home runs.

Bonds could have a chance to pass Aaron as early as Sunday against the Padres, before the Giants start a seven-game, seven-day home stand. The Padres eventually overcame Saturday's milestone home run to win the game 3-2 in 12 innings, long after Bonds was replaced for a pinch runner.

Playing in recent years under a growing cloud of doping suspicions, Bonds' chase of the beloved Aaron's mark has focussed national attention on the sport's failure to take effectively measures against performance-enhancing substances.

Testing for steroids only began before the 2005 season, and a system to test for the long-rumoured use of illegal stimulants is even more recent.

Bonds, 43, son of a one-time major-league star, was already a certain future Hall of Famer with one of the greatest-ever combinations of speed, hitting prowess and defensive ability, when in the late 1990s he began a strength-training programme that quickly transformed him into a hulking power hitter.

He soon set the single-season mark for home runs with 73 in 2001, amid an astonishing late-career surge in offensive production.

A criminal investigation into the BALCO doping laboratory snared advisors close to Bonds and other star athletes, and Bonds was forced to give testimony to a closed grand jury.

According to leaks in 2004 from that grand jury probe, Bonds denied knowingly doping but claimed to have unwittingly used substances given by his personal trainer that may have actually contained steroids.

In public, Bonds has steadfastly denied doping and frequently points out that he has never tested positive for any banned substance.

Known for a surly demeanour with fans and sports reporters, Bonds was never a popular figure, but the steroid cloud has caused him to be wildly booed at road games. He remains wildly popular in San Francisco, having grown up in the Bay Area and spent the last 15 of his 22 seasons as a Giant.

In San Diego, the expected booing seemed less severe than many commentators had expected, though the crowd reaction was clearly mixed.

Some fans cheered enthusiastically, while others were quiet and hundreds held up papers with the asterisk symbol, a silent protest that Bonds' home-run mark in the record book should have a footnoted about his alleged steroid enhancement.

Another spectator who seemed less than thrilled was major-league Commissioner Bud Selig, who was at the game after weeks of debate within the sport over whether he should attend Giants games to be present for the record-setting moment.

Selig, widely criticised for years of inaction against doping issues in baseball, stood up with the rest of the crowd after Bonds tied the record, but he stood passively and did not appear to clap. dpa