Barring injury or indictment, Barry Bonds will almost certainly break Hank Aaron's all-time home run record this season.
When he does, few fans outside his small San Francisco following will be cheering.
Bonds' pursuit of Aaron's legendary record has been dogged by allegations of steroid use, as well as by Bonds' notoriously dour and angry personality.
Hank Aaron was renowned not only for his records but for his gentlemanly style of play and perseverance in the face of the ugliest racism ever shown toward a professional athlete.
Barry Bonds, on the other hand, is renowned for being a juicer on the field and a prima donna off the field.
The tragedy of Bonds is that he never needed steroids to be a Hall of Fame baseball player.
During his 14-year pre-steroid career, Bonds averaged 32 home runs per season while Aaron, over his entire career, averaged 33. Projected over the length of Aaron's career, Bonds would have finished with 736 homers, second only to Aaron's home run record.
In addition, Bonds averaged 33 stolen bases per season to Aaron's 10, and Bonds won 8 Gold Glove awards in the outfield to Aaron's 3. A serious case can be made that Bonds was as good an all-around player, if not better, than Aaron was.
But that just wasn't good enough. Apparently it was an open secret around baseball that both Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa were using steroids during their record-shattering home run duel in 1998.
Bonds was jealous of the fawning media attention they received.
In 2001, the 37-year old Bonds—at the age where the skills of most players begin to decline—exploded for an unprecedented 73 homers (Aaron never hit more than 47 in a season).
However, his stolen bases and fielding ability declined sharply, and his trim physique turned unnaturally bulky and muscle-bound.
The cloud of suspicion grew larger when his personal trainer was indicted for distributing steroids to players.
Like Bonds, Aaron never garnered the public adoration bestowed upon some of his peers, from the barrier-breaking Jackie Robinson to the charismatic Ernie Banks to the electrifying Willie Mays.
It didn't help that they played in big cities like New York and Chicago while Aaron labored away in small-market Milwaukee and then in hostile Atlanta, at the time baseball's most southern city.
Furthermore, Aaron was a distinctly unflamboyant player. He never stole home like Robinson or made eye-popping catches like Mays or cheerfully told the Wrigley faithful ""It's a beautiful day; let's play two!"" like Banks.
Aaron let his steady play on the field speak for him, and he quietly finished his career with better numbers than three men.
Baseball, like America, is a work in progress, and we can gauge its true greatness not just with statistics but with context. Through history, baseball has endured as a national pastime in part because it mirrors the paradoxes of the American context.
It is, as Ken Burns eloquently said, ""a profoundly conservative game that often manages to be years ahead of its time.""
In that, it is like America: the first modern country to enshrine democracy yet one of the last to embrace racial equality.
Aaron and Bonds represent the best and worst respectively of the American spirit: Aaron the triumph of ordinary greatness and Bonds the tragedy of extraordinary greed.
Aaron entered the Major Leagues while racism still reigned, and he remained the object of racist vitriol long after it was gone. Despite the barrage of hatred, he accomplished great deeds with class and humility.
Bonds was blessed with enormous natural talent, a more enlightened social era, and an astronomically higher salary, but he still felt the need to cheat the game of baseball and hurt his own body.
His bitterness toward the world and unpopularity among fans are of his own making.
Barry Bonds may end his career with more home runs than Hank Aaron, but he will never come close to matching Aaron's importance to the game or social significance to the country. When Bonds hits homer number 756, he will be at the top of a new statistical list. But Aaron will forever be the true champion.
