Do you find it, how you say, ironic, that baseball is embroiled in a purity debate of apoplectic intensity?

"Baseball needs to protect Hank Aaron, the way it couldn't protect Roger Maris," opined columnist Adrian Wojnarowski of the Knight-Ridder News Service. "Baseball needs to go back and forfeit seasons of home runs when the evidence and the grand jury testimony shows Bonds was on the juice ... Someone has to stop his historic chase, and someone has to stop it now."

At last glance, 64 percent of respondents to Monday's SI.com poll said Barry Bonds should be hit with fines, suspension, asterisks, and barred from the Hall of Fame. What, no confinement in the public stocks?

Mercy. We might as well put a big, fat asterisk on the cover of the record book. Never mind that the numbers within are queered by the fact that some were generated when ballparks were bigger than the Bambino's gut or the mound was higher than bleacher bums on Nickel Beer Night, or after the postseason became longer than Bud Selig's face. More than a few respected digits are the by-products of outright cheating.

Baseball's DP combo for the ages is not Tinkers to Evers to Chance. It's Bunkum to Hokum to Balderdash. In 1906, the poobahs of our national pastime chose to promote a myth (Abner Doubleday invented baseball) in the face of strong evidence to the contrary. The diamond at the Hall of Fame is named Doubleday Field and the museum itself is now a castle full of rascals.

From Inning One, the game has been stacked to the top of the light stanchions with such time-honored chicanery as spitballs, scuffballs, corked bats, stealing signs, and worse.

"He uses every low and contemptible method that his erratic brain can conceive to win a play by a dirty trick," National League president John Heydler once said of third baseman John McGraw, who is enshrined in Cooperstown as a manager.

To survive, the sport had to invent a grand illusion -- that the conniving swine who played it were swarthy men of virtue -- and the media willingly kept the charade going until Jim Brosnan and Jim Bouton came along with their tell-all books.

If every great player who ever busted the rules to improve his production sprouted a daffodil on his head, we'd be living in a beautiful land indeed. And you must admit we often find these rogues endearing. To whit, I present the following Hall of Fame plaque for your approval:

Gaylord Jackson Perry
San Francisco, N.L., 1962-1971
Cleveland, A.L., 1972-1975
Texas, A.L., 1975-1977, 1980
San Diego, N.L.1978-1979
New York, A.L., 1980
Atlanta, N.L., 1981
Seattle, A.L., 1982-1983
Kansas City, A.L., 1983
Achieved pitchers' magic numbers with 314 wins and 3,534 strikeouts. Playing mind games with hitters through array of rituals on mound was part of his arsenal. 20-game winner 5 times with lifetime ERA of 3.10. No-hit Cards for Giants 9/17/68. Outstanding competitor. Only Cy Young wiinner in both leagues.

Playing mind games with hitters through array of rituals on mound ... How quaint.

Perry was his era's preeminent practitioner of the spitball, an illegal pitch. Would he have won 314 games without it? Many fans chortled, "Oh, that Gaylord!" each time a scowling ump made him take off his cap, display his glove, or trudge back to the clubhouse to replace a uniform adorned with slicks of axel grease, suntan lotion, and/or Vaseline. His opponents were hip to him and gave as goo as they got. Bobby Murcer sent "The Great Expectorator" a tub of lard.

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Like Bonds, Perry avoided outright discovery for years until he was fined $250 and suspended for 10 games in 1982. Before he retired in '83, Perry claimed he didn't throw the spitter anymore. "But he doesn't throw it any less, either," countered manager Gene Mauch.

I don't recall folks howling that Perry's accomplishments should be asterisked, or that the sanctity of the Hall was grease-stained by his induction. Is Whitey Ford's record 10 World Series wins tainted because he was known to use the edge of his ring and the catcher's sharpened shin guard buckle to great effect, and even admitted to pitching fast and loose?

Why the rage because chemicals have given Bonds a big leg (as a well as a big arm, chest, neck and noggin) up in his pursuit of baseball's most hallowed mark? Is it at least partly because he has been such a disagreeable cuss? There is a distinct odor of relish to the calls for banning him, nailing an asterisk to his forehead, or not allowing him within 50 miles of Cooperstown. It may also be that steroids are simply too coldly clinical to wink at. There's no mischievous charm in them, unlike stuffing super balls in your bat or a thumbtack in your glove.

"Pure elixir of malt and hops, beats all the drugs and all the drops," boasted Hall of Fame hurler Mickey Welch, who credited Mother Nature's golden brew with helping him win 307 games.

I'm not saying boot Greasy Gaylord or Malted Mickey from the Hall, or that steroid users deserve a pass. the evil of steroids is in the physical damage they can do and the lure they hold for young athletes who believe they need them to grab the millions that are at stake in a pro career. That's all the reason I need to support a ban with stiff penalties. But I have yet to hear anyone say the real tragedy will be if Bonds' liver and nuclear-accident physique turn into oatmeal and he goes belly-up before his time. The yelling has mainly been about maintaining the purity of numbers, and that is a hopeless cause, especially in baseball where cheating is as traditional as the seventh inning stretch.

I eagerly await your take.