Different

Lots of new stuff going on over at ATT Park. According to Damon Bruce of KNBR, the strawberry shortcake is delicious. There's a party suite on the right field wall. All traces of Barry Bonds are completely eliminated. Wait, what?

Everything. The 756 banners are gone. The "Giant Among Legends" and "Road to History" lettering on the left field padding is gone. The home run counter is gone. The rubber chickens are gone.

Only one memorial remains to remind us that Barry Lamar Bonds once trotted around the bases at 24 Willie Mays Plaza. And it "might be" a plaque or a painted seat to indicate where home run 756 landed. That's it.

The Giants are handling the post-Bonds aftermath the same way they let him go: cold, awkward, and mismanaged. The chase for 756 was so last year, but to completely remove any reminder that Bonds donned the orange and black for 15 years? The Giants want to assert that they are moving in a new, different direction in 2008. Fine. It's the way that management is presenting these actions that makes it so uncomfortable. Instead of rallying the fanbase to the new "grit and hustle" standard, the Giants have alienated and divided it.

I don't know. Maybe the Giants are saving up their fireworks and banners for a huge "Support Barry Bonds Day." Probably not.

Maybe they'll wait until this whole thing blows over, and then we'll see a bit of Barry trickling back into the stadium.

I hope so.