America in turmoil over baseball's worst betrayal

From President Bush to former ball players cleansing themselves on Capitol Hill about a sport's generation of cheating, it's been an uncomfortable voyage of discovery for many Americans to find sultans of swing may actually have been "sultans of the syringe".

Former Oakland star Jose Canseco started it with his extraordinary book. In 1998, America had got misty-eyed about Mark McGwire winning his incredible, record-breaking, home run race with Sammy Sosa. Now, though, Canseco was telling them how he'd injected team-mate McGwire's buttocks with steroids.

Other major figures were implicated, too. Like the owner of the Texas Rangers who, Canseco figured, must have known steroid taking was rampant at his club. One George W. Bush. What with the bombshell revelations from the BALCO lab scandal, too, a snowball of anger and indignation has followed. McGwire was called to testify during the US Congress's recent hearing into the problem but took the fifth amendment. One grieving parent of a kid who'd committed suicide after using steroids took the stand to call these silent players "cowards".

Yet it is still Bonds who makes America feel uneasiest. His absence has spared the nation a hateful dilemma only temporarily. When he returns, it may take him about a month to despatch the 12 homers he needs to break Babe Ruth's former fabled record of 714 before beating Aaron's landmark early next year.

And if it happens, how should a nation react? For in leaked grand jury testimony, Bonds has admitted using substances provided by his weight trainer Greg Anderson, who's been charged with distributing steroids in the BALCO affair. Bonds said he believed they were merely flaxseed oil and arthritis cream but his protests have been met with derision from those who, since Bonds joined Anderson in the late 90s, had watched an already great player in his mid-thirties pile up muscle and home runs freakishly. In 1999, he'd hit 34; in 2000, 49; in 2001, a new single-season record 73.

"I remember when players got older, we didn't get better," US senator Jim Bunning, a former major league pitcher told the hearings. "What's happening in baseball now is not natural nor right."

Bonds's response is simply to talk of hard work and a gift from God. Yet according to the testimony of Kimberly Bell, his former partner - now inevitably dubbed "the Bonds' girl" - he confided his drugs use to her. Federal prosecutors will also investigate his financial records after her claims he evaded taxes.

Few seem to believe Bonds. MasterCard pulled out as sponsor of the record chase because of negative publicity. The best-case scenario, reckoned a New York Times columnist, was that Bonds "is a jerk who did not ask enough questions about what he put into his own body".

There's a desperation that a laboratory superman does not overhaul Aaron, whose dignity, courage and natural grace in breaking the Babe's mark, achieved in the teeth of hate mail from racists determined he shouldn't break the "white man's" record, make him so revered.

The critics say his enforced injury absence should prompt Bonds to quit now, thus sparing himself and the sport the embarrassment of jeers en route to the landmark. It looks like wishful thinking for he's determined to claim the record even if, as many are demanding, it ends up being accompanied by a damning asterisk denoting pharmaceutical assistance.

Yet behind all the sound and fury of the romantic purists, the chances are that some time next year, Bonds will probably smash one out of SBC Park and a souvenir hunter will, as usual, hold it up triumphantly and then auction it. Three million bucks for the asterisk ball, anyone?