What, after all, can Selig do? Suspend Bonds? For what? He's never tested positive for drugs, because baseball never tested anyone. Selig is stuck with what he created: a monster.

Here is Bonds, six home runs behind Ruth and 47 behind Aaron, haunting the game as he prepares for the final assault. Until now, there were suspicions. Now, there’s an exhaustively reported book. It’s not proof — Bonds never has tested positive for drugs — but no one can stop fans from believing that nothing Bonds has done since 1998 has been accomplished without cheating.

If he takes the field on Opening Day, it will be to choruses of derision. Oh, there will always be people who will cheer him and even claim to admire this most misanthropic man, and they will mug their own grandmothers to catch the balls that beat Ruth and Aaron. But the bulk of fans can’t possibly countenance what they will have to witness. To even imagine Bonds surpassing Hank Aaron is enough to make any decent person vomit.

And if Bonds insists on playing and does break the most sacred record in sports, there won’t be a thing baseball can do. The game didn’t care what its players took, and so it has to put the record in its books. He may have broken every rule of fair play, but he didn’t break the rules of baseball.

The only way out of this hideous embarrassment is for Bonds to quit. Now. I’m not going to stay up waiting for him to do so. It would take a man of honor and integrity to take such a step, and we’ve already seen time and again that those are qualities foreign to him.

Too bad you can’t administer them in a syringe.

MORE FROM BASEBALL

Baseball Section Front

Cuban ‘not on prowl’ for Dodgers, or any team   Sosa’s skin undergoing color change Blyleven: Pitching to be had beyond Halladay Damon, Matsui and Pettitte all could return Yankees’ Jeter, Teixeira win Gold Gloves Scully to broadcast in 2010, then decide future Baseball GMs pass on expanding instant replay Martin, Herzog, Murtaugh and Mauch on Hall ballot Free agents Circling the Bases: Blogging on news, rumors, buzz Baseball Section Front   Add Baseball headlines to your news reader: