Selig faces an unenviable trip to San Francisco

	With Bud Selig in attendance, Barry Bonds will be hailed as a conquering hero next week during the All-Star Game. AP

Bud Selig has lived through the cancellation of a World Series, an embarrassing All-Star tie in his hometown and a couple of feet-to-the-fire grillings on Capitol Hill. He's been raked over the public-opinion coals for everything from his willingness to kill two franchises -- that brain burp he called "contraction" -- to his propensity for bad haircuts. Old-time lovers of baseball loathe him for tinkering with the game. Others hold him responsible for baseball's slide into maybe the biggest scandal in its existence.

It's not easy, almost ever, to be Selig, the commissioner of baseball. Early next week at the All-Star Game in San Francisco, it'll be particularly painful.

How will Selig, who turns 73 later this month, maneuver through all the festivities at this year's Midsummer Classic knowing that, all around him, is the central figure in the scandal that may well define his legacy? How can Selig shake hands and smile and celebrate all that's right with the game when the person that many thousands of people believe is what's wrong with it is everywhere?

This promises to be an awkward, cringe-inducing, fist-shaking, up-yours few days in the Bay Area, doesn't it? Barry Bonds, who rightly or wrongly is the sneering mug of the Steroid Era, will transform suddenly next week into the beatific face of All-Star Week. The game will be in his town, in his stadium, in front of thousands and thousands of his most undying, and mostly unseeing, supporters. He will be cheered as if he's saved the game. He'll be defended as if he's done nothing wrong. He will be made out to be both victim and hero.

Selig is entering the lion's den, all right, and Bonds won't have to utter a single roar to make himself heard. Thousands of baseball fans in the stands at AT&T Park for Tuesday night's game will do it for him, in effect shouting down the haters and the headline writers and those who doubt that Bonds' greatness is something gained by hard work and natural talent alone.

Think about this: Someone who knows nothing about baseball drops into the middle of AT&T Park on Tuesday night. Or, maybe, tunes into the national telecast of the game. What's the impression? What's the overriding message?

That Barry Bonds is great. That he is loved by fans and adored by his fellow players. That he is a smiling, humble, gracious ambassador of the game. That Barry Bonds is baseball.

And Selig lost sleep over a simple All-Star Game tie in Milwaukee in 2002. This may keep him up for days.

In some ways, the All-Star Game could be a dry run of sorts for Selig. The commissioner still hasn't said whether he'll be present when Bonds breaks Hank Aaron's career home run mark, a record that could be set very soon. (Bonds has 751 career homers, four shy of Aaron's record.) That decision, to be there or not, will be another difficult one for Selig, the very midpoint between granite and hard place. Being there to congratulate Bonds as he passes Aaron, Selig's close friend, will be seen by many as a tacit approval of the way Bonds has gone about his business. If Selig isn't around, it will be an indication to many that he doesn't believe Bonds to be on the up and up.

Whatever, the lovefest in San Francisco early next week should give the commissioner a good sense of what will be when Bonds breaks the home run record. (Unless, that is, Bonds happens to do the deed away from AT&T Park, in which case the vibe will be entirely different.) If the commissioner can accept it -- if he can stomach all the fawning over a player that is booed almost everywhere else he goes -- then he can probably make it through anything.