updated 1:55 a.m. ET Sept. 24, 2006

SAN FRANCISCO - Barry Bonds posed for the team photo last month alongside all his teammates. He has been taking part in pregame stretching, too, a rarity for the San Francisco slugger in the past.

This season, Bonds has appeared more comfortable in his own clubhouse than in recent years. Perhaps he is relishing the mundane rituals of a 162-game season, knowing this quite possibly could be it for him in a Giants uniform.

Or in any baseball uniform.

Or not.

He’s still wishy-washy on the retirement topic.

So, as the Giants head into their final homestand of 2006 starting Monday night against the Arizona Diamondbacks, many of Bonds’ biggest supporters over the years may be about to get their final glimpse of the seven-time NL MVP playing regularly in San Francisco’s waterfront ballpark.

The 42-year-old Bonds would like to finish his career in the city where he’s spent the last 14 of his 21 big league seasons. Yet he repeatedly has said his future is in the hands of the Giants.

“Did you read the quotes that I’d like to stay at home? That hasn’t changed,” Bonds said of next year, which likely would be his final season.

“I’m not at an age where I can pick where I play,” he said. “If you want me, call me. ... I don’t even know what I’m going to do. Right now, I’m going to wait until the offseason, take care of my family and talk to my son and my wife. They’re the ones who are iffy, not me.”

While the Giants’ brass has said it can see the club moving forward without Bonds, there are significant considerations that come with such a decision: San Francisco hosts next summer’s All-Star game and Bonds is a big reason the Giants draw 3 million fans each year.

And how would management handle watching Bonds become baseball’s career home run leader while playing for another team?

“When you think of Barry, you think of the Giants,” said Texas outfielder Eric Young, who spent part of the 2003 season with San Francisco and remains friends with Bonds. “That’s a long relationship. You hate to see long relationships end, but sometimes they have to. I just hope the situation is right for both of them.”

Special report In-depth look at controversial slugger

Bonds hit his 734th home run Saturday night in Milwaukee to break Hank Aaron’s NL record and move within 21 of tying Hammerin’ Hank’s career mark of 755. It was Bonds’ 26th homer of the season. Still, the Giants aren’t convinced Bonds wants to play another year. If so, would the parties be able to work out a deal?

“We said we would evaluate all this at the end of the year, and you can’t do it until the end of the year,” owner Peter Magowan said. “And that was, I think, in retrospect, a pretty smart thing to say. Because if people had said, ‘We’ll evaluate it when he was hitting .230 and not doing anything,’ the evaluation would have been very simple for a lot of people.

“There are a lot of things that cannot be determined until we stop playing baseball this year.”

Bonds is running well again and making athletic catches in the outfield, finally believing in his legs after he missed all but 14 games in 2005 following three operations on his right knee.

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