An unanticipated thing happened to me after Barry Bonds was crowned as Major League Baseball’s new home run king a few days ago. Rather than being filled with the loathing I was sure would come, I was instead filled with awe.

Not awe of Bonds’ “achievement.” It was awe of the Shakespearean magnificence of Bonds’ unhappy fate.

Bonds is doomed. His future will be almost mythological in its appropriateness. He will spend the remainder of his days insisting that his record was not ill-earned, as so many people believe — with good reason and on the basis of good evidence. The fates gave Bonds what he wanted — fame, glory, records and attention — but as Shakespeare knew and told, the fates tend to make a plaything of any mortal who wants something so badly.

By his own alleged admission before a grand jury, Bonds took performance-enhancing steroids (although he laughably claims he only thought it was flaxseed oil). At the time, he was in his mid-30s, an age when sluggers begin to fade. Bonds, however, swelled with muscle and power. The whispers about this new strength turned into questions, which themselves turned into an investigation that continues to this day. Those questions will never go away. There won’t be an asterisk in the record book. Instead, it will be a figurative asterisk affixed to his memory and reputation. It is an athlete’s scarlet letter.

Even the most innocent celebration of Bonds’ record-setting homer has a way of highlighting that which Bonds wants us to overlook. My local newspaper, for instance, published a full-page pullout keepsake, designed for fans to set aside to commemorate the historic event. It features a huge photograph of a bulky Bonds watching a baseball clear the outfield fence. Across the bottom of the page are the dates when Bonds hit his milestone home runs: His 100th, 200th, and so on.

It took a few minutes before I realized what it was about those dates that seemed significant. Then I started doing some calculations. I discovered that it took Bonds exactly 1,500 days to hit his first hundred home runs; 1,093 days to reach the 200 mark; 1,025 days to reach the 300 mark; 849 days to reach the 400 mark; and 969 days to reach the 500 mark.

By that point, Bonds was 38 years old, well past the sweet spot of the typical career. But Bonds — inexplicably and suddenly large of body — needed only 480 days to reach the 600 mark. Reaching the 700 mark took longer, 771 days, but that was still faster than it ever took him when he was young and in his prime. Then as the steroid scandal in baseball became public, Bonds slowed to a mortal pace. It has taken him 1,056 days to hit the next 57 homers of his career. The story in those numbers is vivid and clear.

After he claimed the home-run record, Bonds met with reporters in the locker room. He was described as “defiant” in one report, which quoted him as saying this: “This record is not tainted at all.”

That’s something he’ll be saying for the rest of his life.

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