Bonds in Lineup Against Padres

Tuesday, April 16th 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

SAN DIEGO (AP) _ A day after slightly straining his right hamstring, Barry Bonds was in the lineup Monday night and feeling good enough to take a home run away from the San Diego Padres.

Bonds finished 1-for-3 with a single and an intentional walk in San Francisco's 4-3 loss, and he robbed D'Angelo Jimenez in the bottom of the eighth. The left fielder got back to the wall on Jimenez's fly ball, timed his jump and got his glove over the 8-foot, 2-inch fence to make the catch.

``The leg only bothers me when I'm stealing bases,'' Bonds said. ``It should feel better tomorrow.''

Bonds struck out against Bobby Jones to end the first inning, but not before exciting the fans when he missed a home run by about 15 feet. His long foul ball reached the second deck in right field.

Coincidentally, the Padres are the team Bonds has hit the most homers against _ 64. His 32 homers in Qualcomm Stadium are the most in any road ballpark.

When he set the single-season homer record last year with 73, 11 came off the Padres. This year, one of his major league-leading seven homers was against San Diego.

After hitting in the indoor batting cage _ regular batting practice was canceled because of rain earlier Monday _ Bonds came out on the field an hour before game time and ran through some drills with trainer Stan Conte.

He ran a few sprints in the outfield, ran laterally as if tracking down fly balls and then ran from first to third. A few fans cheered, and Bonds waved to them.

Bonds, who hit his 574th home run Saturday to move past Harmon Killebrew into sole possession of sixth place on the career list, was hurt in the third inning of Sunday's loss to Milwaukee. It's an injury he first sustained during the final week of spring training.

Before checking out Bonds on the field, Conte said the injury will linger.

``It's going to hang around for a while,'' Conte said. ``He'll be playing with this thing, probably if he doesn't reinjure it, for 30 days. I would expect it to be of some issue.

``This is the reason we gave him the day off the other day. We want this thing to heal, but it's slow healing while you're playing. That's a problem with groin, hamstring and quad injuries. They linger and there's always a chance they can get reaggravated and injured more.''

Manager Dusty Baker, who watched Bonds work out, said the slugger had a say in whether he'd play.

``When you're 37 years old, in pro ball, nobody knows better than you,'' Baker said. ``We don't want to do anything crazy at this point, but also, he knows what to do and not to do at this point. He's in tune with his body more than anybody.''