A documentary TV series about baseball slugger Barry Bonds struck out with viewers as his quest to surpass Babe Ruth's lifetime home-run tally dragged on, and ESPN said Friday it was pulling the program off the air early.
The Walt Disney Co.-owned channel plans to run a ninth episode of Bonds on Bonds Monday before halting the series sooner than originally anticipated, ESPN spokesman Mike Soltys told Reuters.
The program was conceived as an insider's glimpse of the famously combative slugger, chronicling his week-to-week effort to overtake Ruth's second-place milestone of 714 career home runs and then chase Hank Aaron's all-time record of 755 homers.
But Bonds, 41, who missed most of last season due to a knee injury and still seems stiff on his feet, has started this year in a relative slump, taking nearly two months to chalk up the six home runs he needed to tie Ruth's mark last Saturday.
Excitement over Bonds' achievement has been diminished by widely held suspicions he was using steroids at the height of his career, though Bonds denies ever knowingly using performance-enhancing drugs.
In the meantime, the San Francisco Giants outfielder has been overshadowed by the performance of St. Louis Cardinals slugger Albert Pujols, 26, who currently has 23 home runs.
Bonds, a seven-time league Most Valuable Player, still holds the record for most home runs in a single season, 73, set in 2001.
Bonds on Bonds originally was expected to run 10 weeks or longer, but the show never generated much enthusiasm with viewers, averaging a tune-in of just 450,000 households per episode--a fraction of ESPN's reach of 91 million homes.
"He finished last season with a real flurry of home runs," Soltys said of Bonds. "The expectation was that he would start out this season the same way, but the story just didn't develop that way."
He said it was possible Bonds on Bonds could return for individual segments during July's All-Star break or later in the season, "but it won't be weekly any longer."
Director-producer Mike Tollin could not immediately be reached for comment.
Not going to dignify this joker with a comment.
not surprised
Colorful me shocked! Possibly the most hated man in all of sports is not gonna be a TV star? Wow, watershed moment.
I am glad to see you took the Bonds show off the air. I hope anything to do with him stays off the air. Untill he can prove he never took the drugs he should also be kept out of a possible Hall Of Frame entry. In my eyes he is not any better than Pete Rose.<br />
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Don Beauchane
Hmmm...they tried doing a show based on one of the most controversial players in baseball history..a man who is viewed as moody, arrogant and stubborn by fans outside the San Fransisco area...and it failed?<br />
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Not surprising in the least....