To snub or to sanctify?

To greet Barry Bonds on the occasion of his record-breaking home run or to retreat from the milestone and all that will come with it?

Bonds' recent slump at the plate, leaving him stuck on 745, has given Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig ample time to decide whether he should be on hand or stay holed up in his Milwaukee office when the Giants' slugger passes Hank Aaron's 755 record for career home runs.

Public pronouncements would have us believe that Selig remains undecided. That he is judiciously weighing the pros and cons as if this is something like the All-Star teams running out of pitchers that nobody saw coming.

But enough hemming and hawing. Selig should be there, whenever and wherever Bonds finally gets around to tagging No. 756.

Not so much because Bonds' hand requires shaking, but to acknowledge by the commish's presence baseball's tacit complicity in the whole steroid era.

Understandably, the man who likes to trumpet that he represents "the best interests of baseball" might rather play pepper with Osama Bin Laden than be tied to Bonds' impending mark and the perceptions that surround it. But the reality is this steroids chapter came on Selig's watch and, until hounded by Congress, neither he nor MLB did much to address it.

It didn't seem to bother Selig or the owners that baseball was raking in the bucks from a home run explosion fueled by advanced chemistry. Selig's watch began in 1992 as interim commissioner, a position made whole in 1998. The book "Game of Shadows" claims Bonds began using stanozol, the drug which Ben Johnson tested positive for, during the 1999 season. As of 2001, when Bonds smashed Mark McGwire's single-season mark, the book alleges Bonds was up to his padded forearms-deep in the medicine cabinet.

So, ignoring Bonds' clout that sets the career record would be to maintain the fallacy that baseball stood apart from the goings on. Bonds is not alone in this, of course. He is just the most visible face on the front of it by virtue of the mark he chases.

His pursuit of sports' most hallowed record has made it impossible for the issue of performance enhancing drugs in baseball to go away. And what a summer of steroids soap operas it is becoming with Jason Giambi's comments and Tour de France revelations.

If Aaron wants to skip Bonds' record-breaking blast, he is controversy clean and entitled. He wasn't the steward of the game in the steroid era. Selig was. For that, the commish needs to be there.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8044.