Nowhere to hide, Selig opts to show for Bonds, By: Peter Schmuck

Funny how things work out. Bud Selig would not commit to being in attendance when Barry Bonds breaks the all-time home run record, so Bonds has brought the mountain to Mohammed.

The San Francisco Giants arrived in the Commish's hometown tonight with Bonds just two home runs behind Hank Aaron, leaving Selig little choice but to announce he would show up for the opener of a three-game series at Miller Park. The alternative would have been to find an excuse to be out of town all weekend, which would not have fooled anyone.

Obviously, the assault on baseball's most hallowed career record has put Bud in a difficult spot. He is trying to build his legacy around the fight to stamp out steroid abuse in professional sports and he has a long-standing relationship with Aaron, who has made it pretty clear he doesn't consider Bonds a worthy successor. 

Bonds, meanwhile, has never tested positive for illegal performance-enhancing drugs, though his connection to the Bay Area Laboratory Co-op scandal and his dynamic physiological transformation over the past decade makes it easy -- and logical -- to draw the conclusion that he didn't get his amazing musculature shopping at Whole Foods.

So, what's an anti-steroid commissioner to do?

Everyone has been waiting to see if Bonds will be indicted by the BALCO grand jury, but we're probably past the point where the feds are going to get Selig off the hook. It's also very unlikely anything will happen on the field to keep Bonds from hitting three more home runs, which will force the reluctant commissioner to acknowledge the record in some way.

Selig has acted predictably throughout. He refused to be painted into a corner as long as there was the real possibility that age, injury, George Mitchell or the Justice Department might keep Bonds at bay. No sense making a highly controversial decision (either way) if there's any chance that no decision will be necessary, especially in a situation where there is no right answer.

There are a couple things we know he will not do. He won't order that an asterisk be placed beside the record, because there is no proof Bonds knowingly used steroids. Everyone remembers the way former commissioner Ford Frick diminished Roger Maris' single-season home run record by ordering an annotation placed next to it in the record books because it was set over a longer season than Babe Ruth's previous mark. Nobody wants to repeat that injustice. But Selig won't embrace Bonds the way he did Cal Ripken when the Iron Man eclipsed Lou Gehrig's long-standing record for consecutive games.

He announced that he would attend tonight's game, but still hasn't committed to anything beyond that. His ambivalence is not surprising considering the cloud of suspicion over Bonds and his own track record as commissioner. Selig has always been a finger-in-the-wind kind of guy. Most of the major decisions he has made during his tenure have been by consensus, which is why he remains so popular with the baseball owners who employ him.

Unfortunately, there is no consensus on Bonds. The fans are split on whether the record will be legitimate, and baseball's long period of denial about steroids makes it hard for anyone -- including the commissioner -- to be too judgmental.

Bonds has become a lightning rod because of BALCO, because of his disagreeable nature and because he's on the verge of taking a hallowed record away from a beloved figure, but he isn't any more of a steroid villain than Mark McGwire, Jason Giambi, Rafael Palmeiro or the dozens of other players who have come under suspicion during the past decade.

He said in leaked BALCO testimony that he used "the clear" and "the cream" without knowing they contained steroids. I'll believe that when the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy sign with the Yankees, but the commissioner has to base his judgment on facts. He probably hoped that he'd have more information from the Mitchell investigation by now, but not enough hard evidence has been forthcoming to avert the inevitable.

No matter how distasteful it might be to Selig and a large segment of the American public, Bonds is about to become baseball's all-time home run king.

Selig can hold his nose if he wants, but he needs to be there when it happens.