It’s just not the same ballgame

Had to make a decision last week of historic proportions, and I’m not talking about rearranging the living room furniture. No, this was the kind of decision with lasting effects as I settle into my golden years.

Fully aware of the stakes, I labored over it. In retrospect, maybe I should have called a couple of friends for advice. But in the end I opted to handle it on my own.

The choice: I had Barry Bonds’ record-setting 756th home run on tape. I could either keep it for posterity . . . or tape over it.

I taped over it.

Not by techno-accident or in a drunken stupor. In full possession of my faculties, I taped over it the very next night with a couple of innings from a Pirates-Diamondbacks game that, at some point, also will be taped over.

This is what my appreciation of baseball history has come to.

From a guy who still wipes a tear away at the mention of Ebbets Field or while watching footage of Roberto Clemente running the bases, I’ve devolved into someone who doesn’t want to keep a memento of what should have counted, under better circumstances, as one of baseball’s most historic moments.

I know what you’re saying: Get a life.

Hey, sir or madam, I got a life.

It’s rich with friends and family and music and books and my collection of crocheted pajamas I make for neighbors’ cats.

It’s also rich with a lifelong love of baseball. I make no apologies for that. Sport is as much a part of American culture as bad haircuts; we wouldn’t be the same country without them.

For us baseball fans, the game is about moments. Somewhere in my closet, I’ve got a tape of a TV show on baseball’s 25 biggest moments. Obviously, home runs are the stars of the show.

The real fan doesn’t need to hear anything more than “Bobby Thomson” or “Kirk Gibson” or “Bill Mazeroski” to know what those moments are. Those are cultural code words for millions of people.

I can’t stand it that Barry Bonds now has what is arguably the biggest moment. I don’t even like to say “seven fifty-six” out loud, because it’s now a historic number that will live forever.

That’s why I’ve loathed these last few years as Bonds passed Willie Mays and then Babe Ruth and, last week, Hank Aaron. I loathed it, because I knew that even if Bonds’ achievement becomes officially tainted because of proof he used steroids, his numbers will forever be in the books.

Not even an asterisk or public censure will make the number -- whatever his final homer total becomes -- disappear.

The chance that Bonds got his home-run record without significant chemical enhancement is nil in my book. But because it may never be proved, all I can do is purge his moment from my videotape collection.

It’s a puny protest and one that makes me more sad than defiant. Before taping over it, I tried to project 20 years into the future.

Maybe time will change my perceptions and I’ll regret not having the moment as it happened?

I gave it much thought, but couldn’t picture it. More likely is that Bonds and his baseball brothers in crime from this era will become more suspect in the history books.

So, I made about the only silent protest I could -- I erased Barry with a meaningless fragment of a meaningless game. That’ll teach him a lesson!

On reflection, I suppose the erasure could be some mournful metaphor about the tampering effect that steroids have had on the game’s history. Fans went a century without baseball’s records being affected by chemistry. I guess it was too much to expect it for a second century.

But if you need any refreshers on how great baseball can be and what Bonds has done to it, compare and contrast two images as you drift off to sleep tonight:

Think of Barry Bonds’ homer barrage, compliments of his laboratory body, and then recall an injured Kirk Gibson hitting his memorable World Series home run and then limping around the bases through the pain.

Gibson didn’t need steroids. He needed an Advil.

Long live Kirk Gibson.

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Dana Parsons can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com.