Very removed from Barry's history

Sometime during the 2001 seasons, when I was on the San Francisco Giants beat with Dan Brown, we discussed whether the first sentence of our obituary would contain the words "Barry Bonds" in it.

As in: "Josh Suchon, who covered the Giants during a four-year span that included Barry Bonds' single-season record 73-homer season and later wrote a book about him, died yesterday after the parachute broke as he was attempting his first solo skydive. He was 33."

We agreed it would. A year later, after I published a book about Bonds' season, I just about guaranteed that happening. Suppose I still have the rest of my life to do something more noteworthy than writing about Barry Bonds, but I understand these things. Do a Google search for myself and most of the entries still include Bonds, four years after I stopped covering the Giants. Such is life.

I became burned out on Bonds in recent years, but it didn't stop me from wanting to watch history. Took advantage of Monday's off day to visit SF. Thought the planets and stars were aligned perfectly and Barry would do it during the one chance I had to witness. Instead, missed history by a day.

When Barry connected on No. 756, I was in Lancaster, it was the sixth inning, and I was describing a walk to a No. 9 hitter from the No.5 starting pitcher in our rotation. It's safe to say that's not where I thought I would be four years ago when this moment arrived.

A minute or so after Barry's blast, we were during a pitching change, I was looking for the mlb.tv feed and accidentally ended up playing the audio of Barry on the microphone during my internet broadcast.

So yeah, my tiny sliver of being a part of history didn't go as I once thought it would. Still no regrets on this career move. But no question, it was hard not being in San Francisco tonight, hard not watching it live, and hard finding out from the public address announcer in the middle of the Mojave Desert at a minor league ballpark, and hard scrambling to get details as I continued to broadcast my lame ass stinker of a 15-2 loss.