Game will thrive regardless of what happens to Bonds

Fans will continue to come to big league parks in droves, with or without Barry Bonds. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Bonds Indicted   Latest Coverage Supporters create wild scene for Bonds Bonds pleads not guilty at arraignment Bonds wants to keep playing in 2008 Bonds charged with perjury, obstruction Phil Taylor: Bonds in for fight of his life Survey: What about the record book? Michael McCann: Jail time for Bonds? Tom Verducci: Feds put Bonds in exile Bonds Timeline | Who's who? | Indictment High-profile perjury and obstruction cases MLB execs react to Bonds bombshell U.S. officials hail indictment of Bonds SI's coverage of Bonds' 756th home run

MAILBAG Comments, questions or obviously unfounded criticism? To e-mail Donovan, use the form below. Your name: Your e-mail address: Your home town: Enter your question:

We have seen, you have to think, the last of Barry Bonds on a baseball field. Who would touch him now? Who would hire a tainted slugger mired in legal quicksand, facing a high-profile trial with a chance of a decent-sized prison term at the end of it? Who would fork over millions of dollars for an aging and bitter pariah who, even if he clears all those legal hurdles, may yet get stomped on by the big boot of baseball's commissioner?

"I would be surprised if anyone would take the chance," one American League team executive told me, "but [agent Scott] Boras' life motto certainly applies here: 'All it takes is one.'"

The safe bet is that there will be no one to save Bonds now. This is it for him. His magnificent career, now ruined, has ended with a whimper. The cheers he so badly craved -- that pathological need for acceptance that drove him into the biggest mistakes of his life -- won't be heard again. He is a free agent with nowhere to go. Unencumbered and unemployable.

The question now isn't what comes next for Bonds -- court appearances, a trial, more dreary headlines, an eventual retirement in exile in Beverly Hills, whatever -- but what is next for baseball. What does the game do now that the central figure in this sordid, drawn-out affair finds himself on the verge of a very public trial and some very possible jail time? How will baseball handle this latest body blow?

That's where the beauty, the real dichotomy, of this whole mess lies. As ugly and convoluted as the Bonds saga has been and may yet turn into, as disheartening as the stories have been from the whole Steroid Era, baseball doesn't have to do much of anything now. Baseball, if you hadn't noticed, is getting along just fine doing what it's doing.

Oh, Bud Selig and the game's powerful may be ready to some day pounce on Bonds, after the news on Thursday that he has been indicted on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. "I take this indictment very seriously," commissioner Selig said in a statement, "and will follow its progress closely." Baseball might even have a suspension or two in store for those whose names surface once George Mitchell's report on performance-enhancing drugs in the game is released, supposedly sometime before the end of the year. That's what baseball officials do, of course: talk loudly and carry a big shtick.

(To be fair, Major League Baseball has done a lot since Bonds and perhaps hundreds of other players made it utterly apparent -- and, finally, impossible to ignore -- that all was not as it seemed to be. The toughest drug policy that the game has ever seen is now in place. It is, as Selig crows at every opportunity, the toughest policy in pro sports.)

But even with the game's most famous slugger heading toward trial, even with the supposed bombshells of the Mitchell investigation about to burst, even with another scandal seemingly lurking around every other corner, Selig and his band of owners don't have to do anything drastic. Forget the iron fists and the hobnailed boots. Forget the asterisks and expunging the records.

Tweak the drug policy here and there. Mete out some fines. Suspend Bonds, or others, if the situation calls for it. Keep a careful eye out. But remember, despite all the oh-woeism that perpetually surrounds this game, baseball is not in bad shape. In fact, it may never have been better.

Hadn't you heard? Selig and other baseball officials can barely contain their glee these days. More than 75 million people attended baseball games last season, the fourth straight year of record-breaking attendance. The sport raked in more than $6 billion last season, now challenging the National Football League in revenue. The Red Sox and A's will open up the 2008 season in Tokyo, again priming an increasingly global marketplace. Selig is predicting 80 million in attendance for '08. These are heady times.

"If we just keep doing our work, stay out of controversies, keep the focus on the field," Selig said earlier this week, "we'll get to numbers someday that will be stunning. And these are stunning."

At one time, critics wondered whether the Steroid Era was the scandal that would break baseball's back. They wondered whether performance-enhancing drugs could do what the Black Sox, world wars, cocaine, Pete Rose and many others couldn't -- ruin everything.

Instead, even with the smug mug of Bonds dominating the headlines for most of the past decade, with Bonds supposedly trashing the sanctity of the sport with every swing, baseball has thrived. And it'll continue to do so now that he's all but gone.