Bonds moves within 9 homers of Aaron
SAN FRANCISCO: San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds hit a first home run in 15 games in his team's 6-4 loss to the Colorado Rockies on Sunday, the blast moving him within nine of Hank Aaron's Major League record.
Bonds hit a 2-1 fastball from Taylor Buchholz over the center-field wall in the sixth inning for his 746th career homer and 12th of the season.
Asked later whether he was relieved to break his homerless streak, Bond told reporters: "My relief is when we win."
He had gone 0-for-17 during his slump before singling in the fourth inning.
"I'm fine. I've been here before," the 42-year-old Bonds told the San Francisco Chronicle.
"I look at it this way: It's a slump. If it continues for the next five months, then yeah, age caught up with me. But if it doesn't, it's the same thing with anything.
"Every time somebody goes through something like this, it's the same stuff. It's just something to talk about."
The two-run homer followed a single by Rich Aurilia and gave Bonds 2,874 hits, one more than Babe Ruth. It also brought the Giants within 4-3 of the Rockies, who won their fifth straight.
Bengie Molina tied it at 4-4 for the Giants in the eighth with a run-scoring single.
Colorado's Troy Tulowitzki broke the tie with a 10th inning single and Chris Iannetta followed with a run-scoring double to give the Rockies their longest winning streak in three years.
Bonds was 2-for-3 for the game. He walked with two out in the bottom of the 10th before Molina lined out to left.
Lackey gets win No 8
John Lackey won his Major-League leading eighth game of the season as the Los Angeles Angels swept the New York Yankees with a 4-3 road win on Sunday.
The loss was the fourth in five games for the struggling Yankees. It was the first time the Angels swept the Yanks in New York since 2004.
Lackey (8-3) held New York to five hits and two runs over eight innings before handing over to closer Francisco Rodriguez, who gave up a sacrifice fly to Melky Cabrera before battling Derek Jeter to a full count.
He then coaxed Jeter, who with Cabrera on third represented the winning run, into a long fly ball to center field to end the game.
"They (New York fans) expect him to get a hit ... and I expect to get an out," Rodriguez told reporters.
The Angels trailed 2-1 going into the seventh but scored three runs on just one hit to take the lead.
"We have to go out and play better baseball and score some runs and pitch a little better," Yankees pitcher Mike Mussina told reporters after his six-plus innings.
Scott Proctor, who replaced Mussina, twice walked batters with the bases loaded to allow the tying and winning runs in the seventh inning.
"I'm the reason we lost," Proctor told reporters.
"I wasn't making my pitches. ... If I could have figured it out, I would have made better pitches."
Agencies
(China Daily 05/29/2007 page24)
