There are the players who make watching the game a pleasure - Cal Ripken and Tony Gwynn come to mind - and then there are the surly, sordid ones who soil any record they approach. That would be Barry Bonds:

Bonds has two choices here. He can keep swinging for the fences -- whacking at 3-and-0 pitches and hooking outside fastballs -- and take his chances with giving Dodgers fans or Padres fans the opportunity to ridicule him into posterity, to be viewed forever on DVD, Blu-Ray, HD-DVD and whatever new technologies are to come. Or he can make sure he hits only one home run this week, and save 756 for a seven-game homestand against Washington and Pittsburgh, the dregs of the National League. For Bonds, this city is the land of make believe. It forgives the shame be brings to the record because, well, because he wears the uniform of the home team. It's not any more complicated than that. Reality, though, exists outside of this safe house, and it threatens to be rather ugly.

I think it would be entirely appropriate for Bonds to break the home run record, and get booed for doing it. Ruth lived fast and died young, but none of what he was taking could be called performance enhancing. Aaron was a class act all the way, and while he probably played a season or two too long, he was one of the greats. Bonds? He's a walking disgrace.

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