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Barry Bonds booed, cheered, hated-on at PNC Park

Premiere Of Tyler Perry's "Good Deeds" - Red Carpet

LOS ANGELES, CA - FEBRUARY 14: Former MLB player Barry Bonds and his daughter Aisha arrive at the premiere of Lionsgate’s and Tyler Perry’s “Good Deeds” at the Regal Cinemas L.A. Live Stadium 14 on February 14, 2012 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

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Barry Bonds was on hand at PNC Park to present Andrew McCutchen with his 2013 MVP Award this afternoon. Bonds is likely a polarizing figure in Pittsburgh. His leaving via free agency following the 1992 season kicked off the Pirates’ two decades plus in the wilderness. Plus all the PEDs stuff. As a result, you have to assume there would be a lot of boos for him. But you also would figure that some people would cheer for him there because he did play an awful lot of great baseball in Pittsburgh and his Pirates teams won a lot of games.

I didn’t get the broadcast on in time to see Bonds’ appearance, but I went to Twitter to see the reactions:

Pirates fans boo Barry Bonds but he appears oblivious.

— Paul Sullivan (@PWSullivan) March 31, 2014

From field level it sounded like Pittsburgh showed more love for Barry Bonds than anger. 70-30 cheers-to-boos ratio. — Jenn Menendez (@JennMenendez) March 31, 2014


And Bonds gets booed. Big-time. Actually forces Greg Brown to pause.

— Dejan Kovacevic (@Dejan_Kovacevic) March 31, 2014

Quick takeaways: Bonds smiled through entire press conference, happy to return w/Leyland, crowd seemed generally in favor, though some boos — Bill Brink (@BrinkPG) March 31, 2014

more cheers than boos for Bonds. And even a “Barry” chant. #Pirates — Daniel Dudley (@DD_TribLive) March 31, 2014

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that (a) there were boos and cheers; and (b) whether you think there were substantially more of one than the other says more about what you think of Barry Bonds than what 40,000 people in the crowd do.

In other news, regarding Sullivan’s tweet: what is one supposed to if one is booed apart from “appearing oblivious?” Is Bonds supposed to cry? Beat someone up? Or is he supposed to just sit there and display character traits that we really want him to have because we dislike him, like obliviousness?

Or maybe I’m off base here and maybe it was hard to get a gauge on what was happening there? Maybe people don’t have particularly strong opinions?

All that said, I reiterate: To hell with Barry Bonds.

— Dejan Kovacevic (@Dejan_Kovacevic) March 31, 2014

Oh.