It was reported earlier today that a plaque on AT&T Park’s left field wall marking Barry Bonds’ 755 career home runs had gone missing. Not to get all Alex Jones on you, but something stinks to high heaven about this. Say, for instance if the Mets’ giant statue of Mrs. Jeff Wilpon (honoring her role in the Kaz Matsui acquisition) suddenly disappeared. Would you be naive enough to believe this was a simply oversight? The San Francisco Chronicle’s Scott Ostler is just as cynical as yours truly, wondering if Barry’s plaque going AWOL, “part of a bigger plot to erase the memory of the famed (or infamed) slugger?”
I contacted Staci Slaughter, the Giants’ genial and efficient “Senior Vice President, Communications and Senior Advisor to the CEO.”
Slaughter got back to me quickly and said she was on the case. Early Monday she e-mailed me that the shield had disappeared “sometime last week,” and, “We are in the process of making a new one to replace it.”
Now the mystery is what happened to the shield.
Did Bonds sneak into the park and make off with the shield? Did a notorious gang of local wharf rats mistake the shield for a giant cookie? Did the seagulls carry it off?
Hard to imagine a fan or fans making off with the shield. It’s about six feet high, and has to be pretty heavy. First they’d have to pry it off the wall, possibly using a ladder to reach it. Then they’d have to sneak it out of the ballpark. Good trick.
As the cops say on TV, looks like an inside job.