Don't ruin my point with your fancy-schmancy evidence

The San Francisco Examiner is running a story this morning about the unfriendly confines of Candlestick Park and its putative negative effect on the home run totals of Barry Bonds and Willie Mays before him, offering these often-heard observations:

“When you look at what Barry’s done, he should be close to 900 or 1,000 homers if he would have played in a better hitter’s park,” Klesko said. “And I think anyone who’s ever played the game knows that.”

. . . In fact, had Bonds’ godfather, Willie Mays, not played more than 12 years at Candlestick Park, Bonds could be chasing “The Say Hey Kid” for the all-time mark. Mays still managed to hit 660 career home runs, fourth-most in history.

People say stuff like that all of the time without actually checking to, you know, see if it's true. Which in this case, it's not.

Barry Bonds hit 269 home runs in seasons where Candlestick was his home park. 136 of them were hit at Candlestick (the article cites 140 Stick home runs, but four of them came while Barry was a visiting Pirate between 1986 and 1992). 133 of them were hit on the road. That doesn't seem to indicate that he was penalized all that much by Candlestick Park.

Willie Mays hit 431 home runs in seasons where Candlestick was his home park. 219 of them were hit at Candlestick. 212 of them were at on the road. That doesn't seem to indicate that he was penalized all that much by Candlestick Park.

I don't get paid to look up this stuff. What's the reporter's excuse?