Message to Selig on Bonds’ 756th: Sit it out

Bud Selig has a mess on his hands and we’re here to help.

This is not something simple, like an All-Star game in your hometown, where the teams run out of pitchers after the 11th inning and you can just call it off. A few boos, a couple of days of talk show guys and sarcastic newspaper columnists smacking you down and it is over.

No, this is about Barry Bonds. The king of swing. The one major league baseball player who could put a giant “S” on his jersey and the second thing you’d think it stood for was “Superman.”

Bonds is 11 home runs away from breaking one of the most revered of all sports records, Hank Aaron’s 755 in a career. Selig is the commissioner of baseball.

Normally, this would be a joyous time for both. Bonds could take that last swing and Selig could be there, standing at home plate as Bonds arrives, representing all of baseball in this glorious, historic moment.

There would be smiles and high-fives and hugs and music and fireworks and the play-by-play guys ad-libbing their rehearsed excitement. Selig could have the gates opened and Bonds’ new Mercedes, a gift from MLB, driven right onto the field. All the fans would be standing and applauding, except for the local IRS agent, who would be chasing the guy who caught the home run ball.

Sadly, it probably won’t be exactly like that. There is a cliche for situations like this. Selig is between a rock and a hard place.

There is much more to anguish over here than the current outcry over beer in the clubhouses. Was Josh Hancock’s death a wake-up call for MLB to ban beer in the players’ quarters? Is it time to react, rush to a ruling and return prohibition to baseball?

Or do you heed veterans such as Angels General Manager Bill Stoneman and Manager Mike Scioscia, who each said this week that beer in the clubhouse had never been a problem and was potentially even less so now because players don’t hang around much anymore. They can find better places than a team clubhouse to get smashed and then get smashed.

Selig is pretty good at stuff like that. He will let it quiet down and go away on its own. Some of his best decisions are the ones he doesn’t make.

Then there is the ruffle over the return of Roger (the early-season dodger) Clemens, who likes to give whichever team has the biggest Brink’s truck at least four good months, sometimes five. There is a swell of opinion by baseball fans and Yankees haters -- one and the same west of Times Square -- that Selig should make some rule preventing guys from walking off the golf course May 15 and getting the key to Ft. Knox.

The whining is especially loud from Red Sox fans who, we must recognize, are only doing what they do best.

Again, Selig shrugs off this stuff. He knows that Roger the dodger is on the verge of becoming Roger the codger and that eight or nine losses and a 6.20 earned-run average will fix this forever.

The Bonds thing is bigger, and certainly not ignore-able. The clock is ticking. Eleven swings and the Sultan of Swabs will have finally out-hammered Hank.

We don’t want to be so presumptuous as to tell Selig what to do, even though we’ve been doing that for more than 35 years, going back to newspaper days in Milwaukee. We were always there for him, advising him, as then-owner of the Milwaukee Brewers, on things such as player assessment. For example, early on, we told him those new kids, Paul Molitor and Robin Yount, would never amount to anything.

This Bonds thing is big, though. Selig deserves our unbiased, objective assessment.

If Selig shows up and celebrates a crowning of one of the least popular, most-suspected-of-enhancing-his-performance players of all-time, he could end up looking like a fraud and phony down the road.

That would happen if the Mitchell Commission, hired and paid for by baseball -- a.k.a. Selig -- to investigate the use of performance-enhancing drugs in his sport, had Barry Bonds’ name in its report. It is correct that nothing has ever been proved about Bonds and drugs. There is also a saying that where there is smoke, there is fire.

If Selig doesn’t show, he will incur the wrath of several thousand San Francisco Giants fans and the admiration of the rest of Western civilization. Twenty-nine MLB owners will swap high-fives. The owner in San Francisco will pound on the table and hold his breath until he turns blue, then cream-colored.

There they are, Bud. Choices. Options. One coin, two sides.

You can either put on your holster and walk, like John Wayne, to the middle of the street and say, real slowly, “I’m tellin’ all of ya right now, I’m stayin’ home and cleanin’ my gun.”

Or, you can make a wimpy, politically correct call, one that’ll get you praised on “Oprah” and patted on the back at the convention of the Sons and Daughters of American Quilt Makers.

Whatever you do, Bud, we’re with you.

Unless you get it wrong.

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Bill Dwyre can be reached at bill.dwyre@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Dwyre, go to latimes.com/dwyre.