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Bonds homers twice as Giants roll

Apr 14, 2007 - 3:51 AM PITTSBURGH (Ticker) -- Barry Bonds took two big leaps closer to history.

Bonds bashed career homers No. 736 and 737 as the San Francisco Giants recorded an 8-5 victory over the struggling Pittsburgh Pirates.

Homerless since his first blast of the season last Tuesday against San Diego's Chris Young, Bonds lined an inside breaking ball from Pittsburgh starter Zach Duke into the right field seats in the second inning for a 7-2 lead. Two frames later, he sent an offering from Shawn Chacon deep over the wall in right-center field for an 8-2 edge.

"He had a great night tonight and it's nice to see him bust out like that," Giants first baseman Rich Aurilia said. "He'll be the first to tell you he wasn't swinging the bat the way he wanted to so it was good to see."

The seven-time MVP, who also opened the scoring with an RBI single in the first, left in the fourth inning after completing his 70th multi-homer game - second all-time to Babe Ruth's 72. Bonds is 18 blasts shy of tying Hank Aaron's all-time record of 755 homers. He was long gone by the time the game ended.

"What a day he had," San Francisco manager Bruce Bochy said. "He carried us and it wasn't easy taking him out, believe me."

San Francisco starter Russ Ortiz (1-1) came within one out of a complete game. He yielded five runs and 10 hits with a walk and seven strikeouts but left after surrendering a three-run homer to Chris Duffy in the ninth.

"It stings a little bit (not getting the complete game) but we won the game," Ortiz said. "I would love to have finished that game but it's a W and at this point I can't get too picky with wins."

Ortiz was referencing the fact that, coming into Friday's contest, he had the longest active losing streak in the majors. He had lost 12 consecutive decisions, with his previous win coming on Aug. 29, 2005, as a member of the Diamondbacks.

"As of right now, this year so far, having one in the win column, is better than last year," Ortiz said. "I obviously didn't feel like I did my job last year. My job is to help this team win ballgames and I felt like I was able to do that tonight. That makes this year better than last, and I'm just going to try and build off that and just keep getting better and better and not look back."

Duke (1-1) was tagged for seven runs and seven hits in just two innings. This after yielding just five earned runs in his previous two starts combined.

"Not a whole lot was positive (with my start) so I'm just going to put this one out of my mind and move on to the next one," Duke said.

In the Giants' first, they sent 10 men to bat and scored five runs while forcing Duke to toss 42 pitches.

"It was a tough night tonight for Zach," Pittsburgh manager Jim Tracy said. "The game didn't start very good for him and he just could not get himself back on track."

Pittsburgh has lost six of seven since starting the season 3-0.

Aurilia had two hits for the Giants, who have won two out of three after starting the season 1-6.

"Tonight we actually played offensively the way we feel like we're capable of playing every day," Aurilia said. "Everybody swung the bat well tonight. Now we've just got to concentrate on doing this two nights in a row."