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What: “Barry Bonds Supergeek”

Barry Bonds on the cover of The Web Magazine?

Sitting down for an “exclusive interview” for a story that touts him as a “Major League Web Geek”?

Chatting amiably and expansively with a sportswriter about his fascination with computers, his addiction to the Internet, his plans to build a fully wired-for-the-21st-century home in Los Altos Hills and how he was finally able to become “DOS literate”?

Another day in cyberworld, another amazing technological breakthrough.

Scores of baseball beat writers owe a debt to Mark Kreidler, the Sacramento Bee columnist who interviews Bonds for the August issue of The Web. Once, the recommended way for a writer to approach Bonds for a quote was to first suit up in full catcher’s gear, but now there’s a tested, proven, safe and sane method for breaking the glacier ice:

“Hey Barry, seen any good CD-ROMs lately?”

Yes, Bonds readily concedes, he is a Web geek. “It’s all I do,” he says. “When I get home [from a game], I get on the computer. I bought a Toshiba laptop, so I can take it wherever I go. We’re in a hotel on the road, and I’m hooked up on the phone line. It’s all I do.”

Bonds says he uses his computers to chart the stock market, research business decisions--and, yes, check out the various Barry Bonds web sites, “Bonds . . . Barry Bonds” and “Bonds: Better Than The Rest” among them.

“It’s all out there, my whole life story,” he says. “But what can you say? It’s great for sports fans, because they can get information on whatever player they’re really interested in.”

Bonds says he was driven to the Internet out of self-preservation after signing his $44-million contract with the San Francisco Giants. Saying he trusts no one but “myself and God,” Bonds became a hacker in order to better inform himself about potential investments and protect himself against scam artists.

A side benefit, Bonds has found, is that “if a writer writes something bad, you can e-mail him back and say whatever you want.”

Consider it a step forward in the evolution of Bonds-writer relations. The old Bonds dismissal: “Get the #%& out of my face.” The new one: “You’ve got mail.”