Your concern that Barry Bonds might be pigeonholed as a home run hitter since he is, well, hitting all these home runs is misplaced. Take a sedative, a bourbon chaser, and let the peaceful feeling wash over you as you realize you've been worrying about nothing, and why is Cybill Shepherd morphing into Andy Dick?

	Barry Bonds can do a lot more than just hit homers.

If you're seeing that, maybe that sedative/alcohol combo wasn't such a good idea after all. But as for Bonds, the fear that he might be pigeonholed as a home run hitter alone, as Henry Aaron was before him, is baseless.

True, to have condemned Aaron's memory to that of a uni-dimensioned free swinger requires some serious not paying attention, but you know how attention spans shrink with the passage of time and the deterioration of our public schools.

In fact, Aaron was one of several five-dimension superdeduperstars of the richest talent era in the game's history. The only thing Aaron did wrong was play at the same time as Mays, Mantle, Robinson, Clemente, Musial, etc.

But now that Bonds has closed to within 171 of Aaron and the highlights of his career have been reduced to uppercut swing/stare into space/slow acceleration into trot, I suppose we'll have address this matter again.

By the simple tyranny of math, Bonds has hit too many homers to be simply a home run hitter. You can get to 400, maybe even 450 by swinging from your hinder and ignoring the other required skills. See Kingman, Dave, or even Canseco, Jose, for the price that comes from either neglecting your skills or having them neglected by the teams for which you play.

You cannot get to 584 only doing the one thing that got you to 584. You have to play every day, or close to it. You have to be able to perform other services to play every day. You know, running, catching, positioning, paying attention, stuff like that.

And this is where Bonds separates himself from the worry that he might be considered less than what he is.

He has the stolen bases to convince you of his speed. He has the walks to convince you that he didn't just flail away like he had a cab waiting. His defense has always been adequate, although because of a hinky elbow his arm has deteriorated to a substandard level in the last several years.

And that's about all you can say in rebuttal. He may be more Regis Philbin than Kelly Ripa in his media dealings, he may not have been the quintessential back-slapping teammate, and he may have some explaining to do about that KFC commercial.

But that's it. He has elevated his status to the point where he and Ted Williams are listed as the two best left fielders of all time (personal choice prevailing), with Rickey Henderson a distant but clear third.

And not just because he has hit 139 homers in his last 13 months of play, either.

The problem with Bonds in his current state, if there is one, is in us. The nightly Bonds highlight is the home run, and is expanded locally to the near home run or the huge swing and miss in games the Giants lose.

You know, as in, "If he'd only hit a home run here, they would have won, and life would have been better for all Americans," and blah-de-blah-de-blah.

But Bonds is 37 now, and expectations have turned into deeds. Having hit 73 homers, the outer envelope of man's achievement (never mind the computer, philosophy or the polio vaccine -- this is it), Bonds is beyond the point of our demands. If he wants to chase something, he's got himself.

And all there is left is a number -- 755 -- that doesn't even define Henry Aaron adequately. Barry Bonds was going to the Hall of Fame before he hit those 73 homers, so his name was made already.

Or in journalism terms, all he's done is rewrite the first three paragraphs. The story has already been finished.

Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Chronicle is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.