In a week in which my favorite baller Kobe came up just short, my favorite playboy Matty L shacked up with a Hilton and my Sunday nine o’clock hour was wasted on yet another nonsensically tiresome and worthless episode of The Sopranos, the story that compels and captivates me the most is that of Barry Bonds.

Barry Bonds, one of the greatest athletes of any era, hit the 713th homerun of his illustrious, yet exceedingly controversial career on Sunday night. The mammoth blast now lands the mammoth of a man one homerun shy of the iconic Babe Ruth for second on the all-time homerun list, the most ballyhooed of records in baseball or any sport.

Yet, when Barry blows past the Babe in the next week or so, he will be met by mostly jeers, few cheers and swirling questions about performance enhancing drugs, his abrasive personality and whether his 714 should be accompanied by an asterisk. While I am no fan of Barry Bonds, what he has done, the way he has conducted himself or his undeniable use, admitted or not, of steroids, I do feel for him to a degree.

What people fail to remember is that Bonds, pre-steroids, was on his way to becoming one of the greatest baseball players who ever lived. His use of steroids surely added about 150 homeruns to his ledger, but without the juice Bonds goes down, nice guy or not, as a guy who hit well over 600 dingers in his career to go along with the rest of his unmatched talents on the diamond. He goes down as one of the greatest to ever live. Ruth, Mays, Aaron, Bonds. No questions asked.

Bonds’ mistake is his insatiable desire to go from legendary to legendary*. His quest for perfection blinded him to the fact that on the baseball field he was as close to perfect without the steroids as anyone has ever been. Now, for a few extra homers, a couple of extra inches to his biceps and his dome, and a broken record that no one will ever look upon meaningfully, Bonds is now relegated to an afterlife of infamy, gloom and asterisks.

Irrespective of all of that, I will remember Bonds as one of the greatest baseball players to ever live. Homeruns or not, I will remember the player who grew up in Pittsburgh with Bobby Bo into the early 90s and matured into a superstar in a solo gig in San Fran throughout the next decade. I’ll remember the Barry of 190 pounds soaking wet, stealing bags and playing a flawless left field. I’ll remember the old school cross diamond earring, and the effeminate voice as he did his post game press. I will remember Barry Bonds like that. And unfortunately for him, I am the only one.