Barry’s back…waaaay back, he’s to the fences, he’s…GONE! (And I’m not that upset about it).

I am a San Francisco Giants fan. Ever since I’ve followed baseball, and admittedly it hasn’t been for that long, I’ve rooted for what I consider to be my hometown team…and on occasion I’ve rooted for what I consider to be the “other” hometown team across the Bay (please relegate your bashing to the comments section below). And now, in the wee hours of the A.B. (After Barry) era, I don’t feel the remorse, disappointment and emptiness some of my fellow brethren are feeling, I feel…relieved. Gone is Barry’s contract, which was a tribute to albatrosses everywhere. Gone are the hushed whispers in the locker room. Our young players living in fear of disturbing the old Man, as he relaxes in his leather recliner in front of his three locker stalls…deciding what inning he may need to retire during tonight. Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News had an inside look at this transformation last night and seemed wholly positive about what he saw (free registration required).

Now, this club can embrace their youth, 18 out of the 35 players on the Giants active roster are in their 20’s. The Giants can start to build some fresh talent from the ground up, a move they were reluctant to make with Bonds on board. We can start to attack teams with our speed (See: Fred Lewis, Rajai Davis and Eugenio Velez) and our defense (See: Omar motherfuckin’ Vizquel!).

With Bonds' departure comes a clean slate. It’s like we just hit the ‘reset’ button on our franchise. Now it’s time to start from scratch, form a plan and execute it. This team will have some direction again. Barry spent 15 years with our club, and I’m grateful for the attention he brought, some good some bad, and the national exposure he gave us. But aside from our 2002 World Series stint we never found the right mix of talent to put around #25 to ensure we took full advantage of his partially-god-given talents. Now, Bruce Bochy and Peter McGowan can open up their collective minds and, not collective, pocketbook and find players to plug into a system they will design and build with their own hands.

This post is not intended to slight Barry Bonds as a person or to diminish what he has achieved as a San Francisco Giant. Few will replicate the kind of production he put up in this league. And even fewer will do it under the same intense public scrutiny Bonds navigated through. He was demonized, cherished, loved, hated, respected, denounced, attacked and acquitted. Through it all he continued to do what he did best, smack the hell out of the ball and put up runs for a team that continued to do what it did best; squander in the lowest ranks of the always wide-open NL West and occasionally flirt with the postseason.

The Giants were stuck in purgatory. We had a prime-time high-profile player earning prime-time high-profile bucks. And he deserved them, he produced eye-bulging numbers, won 7 MVP’s, even some gold gloves in his younger years, but we never had a ‘team’. The Giants were a one-trick pony and in the MLB of all leagues, that does not win games.

This is not to say we’ll suddenly transform into a powerful foe next season, but what would signing Bonds to another year have done for us anyway? We made a decision, management stuck by it, the employees are excited about it, and the future for Giants fans for once, actually looks bright. Deep breath…ahhhh, relief.