Team missing Bonds' offense, fan following

SAN FRANCISCO - Baseballs launched into McCovey Cove float untouched in the water now. The kayakers who once fought for Barry Bonds' splash hits have found better things to do.

Nearby boats don't blow their horns in celebration anymore. And the rubber chickens that fans waved during intentional walks are mostly collecting dust.

It doesn't take a glance to left field, the scoreboard, or the standings to realize something's missing around the San Francisco Giants.

From depressed television ratings to ticket scalpers giving away seats at cut-rate prices, signs of Bonds' season-long absence are everywhere.

"It's been disastrous," said Ted Choi, the owner of City Kayak, which rents boats for fans to take to McCovey Cove. "Basically, the kayak rentals are down to practically none."

When Florida's Carlos Delgado splashed a homer into the cove last month, there was nobody in the bay to retrieve it - and with good reason, since Michael Tucker is the only Giant with a splash hit all season. When Bonds is healthy, fans arrive hours before first pitch to find a place in the water.

With Bonds now saying his knee injury will keep him out of the lineup until 2006, this has turned into a rough year for all the people who have made money off the slugger's home run records and the victories he brings the Giants. Game tickets are one indicator - on the Internet, they're selling for as little as one-quarter of their face value.

"When you've got the excitement I've created - my home runs are a lottery ticket - then you've got a city that's excited," Bonds said earlier this season during a particularly demoralizing losing stretch.

As for Bonds himself, the financial impact of his absence has been mixed. He's been hugely successful in licensing and memorabilia, ranking among the top five off-field earners in baseball, according to a recent study by Forbes magazine.

But while Bonds has publicly denied using steroids, he told a federal grand jury investigating steroid distribution by the Bay Area Laboratory Cooperative that he used substances prosecutors believe were illegal performance enhancing drugs, according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Bonds' off-field income has dropped since then, according to Forbes, and he has lost opportunities for national endorsement deals.

"He's gone from someone who has never gotten a lot of endorsements to someone who's likely not to get any more and likely lose some that he already had," said Steven Levitt, the president of Marketing Evaluations Inc., which tracks the "Q rating" popularity of athletes and other celebrities.

Bonds' Q rating, a number advertisers use to help decide who should pitch their products, has dropped to where it was before he broke Mark McGwire's single-season home run record in 2002. His negativity rating in the general population has increased substantially, with three times as many people disliking him as liking him, according to the study.

In recent years, Bonds' endorsement deals with MasterCard Inc., Charles Schwab Corp. and KFC have expired.

Forbes recently estimated that Bonds' income from endorsements, licensing and memorabilia fell from $4 million to $3 million over the last year. Bonds still makes the bulk of his income on the field - he's in the fourth year of a $90 million, five-year contract.