EXCUSE THE INTERJECTION: WHEN SUN COLUMNISTS COLLIDE

Friday, March 17, 2006 | 7:10 a.m.

New books and magazine stories detailing the slugger's use of performance-enhancing drugs have cast an even bigger shadow on Bonds as he closes in on some of the most treasured milestones in sports.

RON KANTOWSKI'S TAKE: What should baseball do with Barry Bonds? Continue to pitch him very carefully. Juice or no juice, the guy can hit. Oh, you mean the records and the Hall and Fame. That's a little more complicated.

JEFF HANEY'S TAKE: Let his records stand and put him in Cooperstown. Every era in baseball history - not just the modern one - has had its share of cheaters, scandals and dirty rotten scoundrels. When Bonds hits No. 715 or No. 756, I'll view it as a tremendous accomplishment by a guy who, like all of us, happens to be a flawed human being.

RK: Although I still recognize Roger Maris as the single-season home run king - every guy who has beaten him has a head bigger than a beach ball - I actually agree. Not about the tremendous accomplishment, but about Bonds getting to keep the records. I just think the record book should come with some sort of preamble that explains the different eras - Deadball, Expansion, Steroid, etc. - and how the records have always been skewed because of the differences.

JH: If you call out Bonds as a cheater and try to discredit his records, you're heading down a slope as slippery as the one in the outfield at old Crosley Field. According to Jim Bouton, half of the major leaguers in Hank Aaron's heyday were playing baseball while hopped up on amphetamines. If the cream and the clear constitute cheating, then so do greenies. Hall of Famer Gaylord Perry gleefully admitted to cheating - in the title of his autobiography, no less ("Me and the Spitter.") The fabled 1951 Giants evidently were master sign-stealers. Heck, the list of offenses is probably longer than the corked bat Norm Cash used to win the 1961 batting title.

RK: And what about the ballparks themselves? Is hitting 500 home runs at Wrigley Field the same as hitting 500 home runs at the Astrodome? I think not. There's probably not a record in the book that doesn't deserve an asterisk.

JH: Some of the pitchers Bonds faced were undoubtedly receiving an illicit boost from steroids. The only question is how many. One estimate had 50 percent of major leaguers on steroids, leading to Rickey Henderson's famous, if mathematically challenged, retort: "Well, I'm not, so that's 49 percent right there."

RK: You gotta love Rickey Henderson. You don't gotta love Barry Bonds. I think it'll be up to each individual baseball fan - and not the game itself - to judge him. But after reading the Sports Illustrated story, the mental image I keep coming back to is not one of Bonds' massive hands wrapped around a Louisville Slugger or even a steroid syringe, but one of Bonds' massive hands wrapped around the throat of his mistress.

JH: No question Bonds belongs on the roster of baseball's notorious villains - a list that's longer than Ugueth Urbina's machete and contains more than one Hall of Famer. So don't give Barry the Good Guy Award at the annual team banquet. Just don't try to tamper with the numbers he put up between the lines.