San Francisco Giants slugger Barry Bonds hit his 715th career homer on Sunday, overtaking baseball legend Babe Ruth for second place on the all-time home-run list.

Bonds' fourth-inning blast against the Colorado Rockies' starting pitcher Byung-Hyun Kim came a week after he matched Ruth's 714 career home runs.

The milestone College World Series homer was a powerful shot, traveling an estimated 445 feet and landing over the center field wall of the Giants' waterfront AT&T Park.

At age 41, Bonds, a seven-time Most Valuable player who has struggled with injuries over the past year, now trails only Hank Aaron's 755 homers for the Major League Baseball record.

Bonds told reporters he would like to become the home-run king but would not predict if he could do it. "If you keep playing long enough anything is possible," he said.

Bonds, whose father Bobby Bonds and godfather Willie Mays were Giants, said it was a thrill to pass Ruth at home. "There's nothing better than hitting it here," Bonds said.

Giants fans thought so too, New York Mets. They gave a standing ovation to Bonds, a hero to the Giants faithful who have looked past the outfielder's central role in baseball's steroid scandal. A federal grand jury is investigating whether Bonds lied during a probe into steroid use by professional athletes.

The crack of his bat signaled a deep drive and set off a scramble in the center field bleachers for the historic ball. Bonds said he had no doubts he had swatted a homer.

"I knew it was definitely gone," he said.

Seventeen-year-old Giants fan Jeff Lee of Hercules, California, went to catch the ball, but it tipped off the top of the baseball glove he had brought to the game.

"I should have brought my first-base glove, then I would have caught the ball," Lee told Reuters.

The ball fell below the stands and into an area with concession booths, where 38-year-old Andrew Morbitzer of San Francisco was standing.

Morbitzer, who had gone to buy beer and peanuts, said he heard the roar of the crowd, looked up and Bonds' home-run ball fell into his hands.

"It's just fun to be a small part of a big day," Morbitzer said, adding he will hold on for a while to the ball, likely worth tens of thousands of dollars at auction.

As Bonds rounded the bases, joy and relief swept the stands. Giants fans had packed AT&T Park this week for games with the St. Louis Cardinals and the Rockies, longing to see Bonds make baseball history amid the intense public scrutiny he has faced on and off the playing field.

Bonds has denied knowingly using performance enhancing substances, but suspicion has cast a cloud over how he will be remembered in baseball's record books and his play this season has not generated much enthusiasm beyond San Francisco.

Bonds' historic homer scored two runs for the Giants in a 6-3 loss to the Rockies. Paul Richardson, who was with his family on an annual visit from Granite Bay, California to AT&T Park, took the loss in stride. "Barry saved it for us," he said.

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Tickets -- Minnesota Vikings quarterback Daunte Culpepper could miss the rest of the season after injuring his right knee against Carolina on Sunday, coach Mike Tice said.

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Minnesota Vikings head coach Mike Tice (right) helps quarterback Daunte Culpepper off the field.
"The quarterback doesn't appear to be in good shape," Tice said. "I'm not a doctor, but the initial tests are not good. It doesn't appear that it's going to be anything that we as Vikings will want to hear.
"Things happen that are devastating. This certainly, if it's as serious as it appears, is devastating to our football team."
The loss of Culpepper is the latest in a string of emotionally-wrenching disappointments for the Vikings, including lopsided losses and allegations of lewd behavior by team members aboard a chartered lake cruise earlier this season.
Culpepper was seen crying in the locker room after Sunday's game, and when asked about his conversation with Culpepper, Tice looked down and mumbled, "He said, 'I love you,' and I said the same thing to him. I love him, too."NHL Tickets
Culpepper ran for an 18-yard gain on the final play of the first quarter when he was hit by multiple defenders. Carolina cornerback Chris Gamble came in from the side and tackled Culpepper's leg and he immediately grabbed his knee.
Daunte Culpepper
Quarterback
Minnesota Vikings

Profile
2005 SEASON STATISTICS
Att Comp Yds TD Int Rat
212 136 1372 6 12 71.6
Culpepper was helped off the field and taken to a cart for the ride into the locker room. The team initially said he sprained his knee.
He was on crutches with a heavy brace around his knee after the game and said he wouldn't know anything until after undergoing an MRI on Monday.
"I'm not talking about anything," Culpepper said. "We don't know the extent of the damage right now. I really can't talk about it until we do the MRIs and find out."
Vikings trainer Chuck Barta said the team hadn't ruled out a possible torn anterior cruciate ligament in Culpepper's knee.
"Football is a contact sport," receiver Marcus Robinson told the Star Tribune when asked if the hit could be called dirty. "The guy came in from the side, yes. He could have hit Daunte up high, but he came down low. That's part of the game. That's part of football. Unfortunately, you hate to see an injury come because of it."
Brad Johnson replaced Culpepper and went 13-for-28 for 162 yards and a touchdown in Minnesota's 38-13 loss to the Panthers.
"We have to rally around Brad," Tice said. "Brad doesn't have the same arm Daunte has, [but] Brad has played a lot more games than Daunte has. We can make up for the different styles by going to more short passing to give ourselves a chance to suit his style.
"Brad is a very good quarterback, he's won a Super Bowl. We have faith in Brad."

EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. -- In a week as passionately polarized as the past one has been for the New York Giants, a stretch that began with a stirring comeback victory over Denver last Sunday but also included the death of the franchise's beloved patriarch, a team's collective emotions can become either fragmented or focused.
On Saturday evening, as the Giants huddled in their hotel, key players emphasized during separate offensive and defensive meetings, that the time had arrived to honor the memory of co-owner Wellington Mara with deeds and not words. And on Sunday afternoon, in a thorough thrashing of their oldest and most reviled opponent, the Giants turned grief into the kind of great all-around performance of which Mara would have been very proud.
They were as focused as a laser, surgical in their execution, and essentially burned holes through every unit of the outmanned Washington Redskins bunch.
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Tiki Barber rushed for a career-high 206 yards.

"Let's be honest," acknowledged center Shaun O'Hara, in the wake of New York's 36-0 victory, "it was the only way we could have made this whole week right. It was a week of emotions, a week of reflection, a week of distractions. But when we finally focused on football, and realized we had to put the other stuff behind us and just go out and play, it all came together. I mean, it was just all so fitting, you know?"
Fittingly, the last two players with whom Mara visited on Monday, a day before he died, played major roles in a victory that catapulted New York into first place in the NFC East. Running back Tiki Barber and tight end Jeremy Shockey, summoned to the Mara home in Rye, N.Y., to say their good-byes, each scored touchdowns. And Barber established a new career best, rushing for 206 yards on 24 carries, setting the tone with a 57-yard jaunt on the opening play from scrimmage, and rolling to 171 yards in the first half alone.
"It was the kind of win Mr. Mara would have liked," Barber said. "Running the football and playing [great] defense."
Indeed, not to be outdone, the suspect Giants defense, statistically ranked 31st in the NFL in total yards allowed overall and versus the pass, limited the high-flying Redskins offense to an anemic seven first downs and 125 yards. Washington eked out 38 rushing yards and quarterback Mark Brunell, who looked skittish all day, and replacement Patrick Ramsey, were sacked five times. Of the Redskins' 16 possessions, eight ended with punts, four on turnovers, two on downs, one at the end of the half and the last at the end of the game.
It marked the first regular-season shutout for the New York defense since a 20-0 win over Philadelphia on Nov. 22, 1998, a stretch of 107 contests. Not since a 51-0 lambasting in 1961 had the Giants blanked the Redskins in a regular-season matchup. As powerful as were the Giants, the Redskins were conversely pitiful in every facet of the game, as they lost for a third time in their last four outings.
All those Joe Gibbs apologists, who insisted earlier in the season that the Redskins head coach had merely suffered an aberrational season in '04, might want to consider delaying the canonization ceremony a while longer. Gibbs looked like just some Ordinary Joe on Sunday, and his team was extraordinarily bad, to say the least. The shutout was the first ever against Gibbs in a regular-season contest.
"We didn't play our best," said understated Santana Moss, the Redskins' electrifying wideout, who was held to four catches for 34 yards. "They got on a roll and just trampled us."
No one trampled any harder than Barber, who played only three quarters, retiring after a four-yard touchdown run, just 12 yards shy of the franchise rushing mark.
Barber was most effective running to the left side, and against a Washington 4-3 front, a scheme the New York offensive line absolutely bulldozed. The 57-yard run on the first snap of the game set the tone, not only emotionally, but also schematically. When the Redskins were in a four-man front, which they played on 80 percent of the Giants' 78 offensive snaps, New York most often ran left, to the weak side, and at Washington right end Phillip Daniels and right tackle Joe Salave'a.
By unofficial count, Barber gained 181 yards off the left side and his backups, Derrick Ward and Brandon Jacobs, added 46 yards going left. So of the Giants' 262 yards on the ground, 227 came when running behind the left side tandem of tackle Luke Petitgout and guard David Diehl. In addition to the opening run, Barber added bursts of 59, 14 and 18 yards, all to the left side.
The opening play, Barber revealed, came off a suggestion by middle linebacker Antonio Pierce, who defected from the Redskins after a standout 2004 season to sign with the Giants as an unrestricted free agent. Pierce told the coaches that the Redskins' defense likes to choose five frequently-run plays it feels the opposition will start the game with, and will over-defend them. The run by Barber, on which he got solid downfield blocks from his wide receivers, was one the Giants had not used much in 2005.
Barber was certainly one of the more emotional Giants players during the week and that carried over as he took the field on Sunday afternoon. In fact, emotion was obvious in the partisan crowd, and was further stoked when Mara's granddaughter, Kate Mara, sang the national anthem, wearing a No. 89 team jersey (Mara's age when he died) and with his nickname, "Duke" emblazoned across the back. Kate Mara was surrounded by the rest of the Mara grandchildren.
When the game began, however, the Giants were able to operate with total dispassion, and simply played a far more physical game than did the Redskins, who appeared out of step, out of sync and, certainly, out of answers.
In fact, only a pedestrian outing by Giants quarterback Eli Manning (12 of 31 for 146 yards, with one touchdown pass, an interception, and a 51.3 efficiency rating), and New York's inability to cashier red zone opportunities kept the final score from being even more embarrassing.

MIAMI -- Al Lopez, a Hall of Fame
catcher and manager who led the Cleveland Indians and Chicago White Sox to American League pennants in the 1950s, died Sunday at 97.
Lopez caught many of the game's all-time greats, from the Big Train to Bob Feller to Dizzy Dean.
Lopez had been hospitalized in Tampa since Friday, when he suffered a heart attack at his son's home, Al Lopez Jr. said.
Lopez was the oldest living Hall of Fame member, said Jeff Idelson, spokesman for the Hall. He caught Bob Feller, Dizzy Dean and Dazzy Vance, but never forgot working as a teenager with Walter Johnson, who won 417 games and possessed a legendary fastball.
Lopez hit .261 with 51 homers and 652 RBI during a 19-year career in which he was one of baseball's most durable catchers and set the record for most games caught in the major leagues at 1,918. The record was later broken by Bob Boone, then Carlton Fisk.
Lopez was best known for being the only AL manager to lead teams that finished ahead of the New York Yankees between 1949-64. He helped the Indians to the 1954 pennant and, until last week, was the last manager to lead the White Sox to the World Series -- their 1959 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers.
"We're saddened by the news," White Sox chairman Jerry Reinsdorf said through a spokesman Sunday. "Al lived a long and good life. We're so pleased we were able to win the World Series this year and that he was able to see it before he died."
The two-time All-Star's first full season in the majors was 1930, and he played 18 seasons for Brooklyn, the Boston Braves, Pittsburgh and Cleveland. He managed the Indians from 1951-56 and the White Sox from 1957-65 and 1968-69.
During spring training in 1925, the Washington Senators hired the 15-year-old Lopez to catch batting practice for $45 a week. Johnson was nearing the end of his career by then, but still made an impression on the youngster.
"He wasn't firing like he used to, but he was still very fast and had very good control," Lopez said. "All you had to do was hold your mitt around the strike zone, and it'd be right there."
Every offseason, Lopez returned to Tampa, where he was born in 1908.
"They've treated me real nice here," Lopez said in a 1994 interview. "They've given me parades, they've given me banquets, they named a ballpark after me. Now they tore the ballpark down, so they named a park after me and put up a statue.
"I say, 'Why are you doing this? I was just doing something I liked.' "
Lopez also recalled the time as a manager that he was thrown out of an exhibition game in Tampa after umpire John Stevens blew a call on the first day of spring training.
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"I hollered, 'John, are you going to start out the year like that? First play we have and you miss it. Are we going to have to put up with you all spring?' " Lopez said.
"He said, 'One more word out of you and you're gone.' I said, 'You can't throw me out of this ballpark. This is my ballpark -- Al Lopez Field.' He said, 'Get out of here.' He threw me out of my own ballpark."
Though baseball players got bigger and stronger through the decades, Lopez still revered the players he knew, his son said.
"I don't think he thought there were any players today that were better than Babe Ruth, the old-timers he played with," said the 63-year-old Lopez Jr.
Although he held the record for most games caught until Bob Boone caught his 1,919th game in 1987, Lopez was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1977 as a manager with a .581 winning percentage.
The Indians won a then-AL record 111 games in 1954, and his 1959 "Go-Go" White Sox won Chicago's first AL pennant since 1919. His teams finished second to the Yankees every other season that decade.
"He was very fair," said Jim Rivera, a center fielder for the '59 White Sox. "If you did something good he would compliment you. If you struck out or made an error, he wouldn't say a word, as long as you hustled and worked hard."
Lopez's second stint as manager of the White Sox ended May 2, 1969, when he resigned for health reasons with a career record of 1,422-1,026.
"Al was a Hall of Famer in every sense of the term," Idelson said. "He carried himself with great class and he was incredible contributor to the game."
With Lopez's death, former New York Yankees shortstop Phil Rizzuto, 88, becomes the oldest living member of the Hall.
Lopez remained active in his retirement, frequently shooting his age in golf, and he also closely followed the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, his son said.
Lopez had lived alone in Tampa since his wife, Connie, died in 1983. He is survived by Lopez Jr., three grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.