My plea to Barry Bonds

Barry Bonds did not, all by himself, make the periodic table part of baseball's stat panel. There are others who must answer for the game's atomic asterisk as well. But if he continues in his pursuit of the remaining home run milestones -- with 703, he's got Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron in his sights -- he will surely be the point man in what promises to be an ugly debate on the chemical perversion of performance.

If he stays, every at-bat will be a call for suspicion, every home run a reminder of corners cut, the game cheated, fans fooled. Every record he reaches a sad, cynical testimony: Crime does too pay.

Bonds, because of generational timing and an apparent willingness to ingest rocket fuel, is a kind of test case for our moral tolerance. His prime was in that sordid sweet spot, right after the explosion of hormonal additives and right before baseball's belated decision to start testing for them. He and more than a few others fattened up during this era, taking advantage of both an illicit science and a three-monkey commission that seemed to have seen nothing, heard nothing and certainly said nothing. The home runs were thrilling, the records astonishing. Bonds's devotion to self-improvement was ... what? Pretty much wrong, apparently.

If Bonds does continue, now past his synthetic prime, it will only serve to invite shame. Did we really go along with this cheating for the sake of a home run chase? Did we really enjoy all those blasts, sort of knowing they were forged with everything but artificial coloring? We're going to feel really cheap. It was one thing to marvel at a physical specimen just coming into his own in his mid-30s, his hat size climbing along with his home run totals; it's quite another to condone the underground chemistry that placed everybody else at a disadvantage.

Here is my modest proposal: Barry, leave now. Spare us the hangover from our home run binge, save us from a season of regret, rescue us from the guilt of being entertained by your fake power. Do not linger for the purpose of surpassing either Ruth's total (714) or Aaron's record (755), both of which will only draw attention to your own character failure.

This is not only doing the right thing, it's doing the smart thing. We'll not forget the excitement you brought to the game just walking to the plate. Even knowing that you were juiced, which you admitted in grand jury testimony, does not entirely diminish the theater of each moment.

Even if you leave now, you're not going to get away with everything. The scarlet "S" will hang from your neck, like so much negative bling, for as long as you're remembered. But you will at least prevent the kind of postscript that dooms you to historical villainy or, worse, buffoonery. You don't want to play clean and hit, let's say, 18 homers, do you? You'd regret this season far more than we would, trust me on that.

You will not enjoy the run-up to Aaron's record either, during which your chemical enhancement will come to be seen as a surprisingly large and unfair influence on your achievement. In fact, anything you accomplish from here on will be in the context of an extended con. And anything you don't will refocus your deceit. Really, you can't win.