His immortality is sealed. Tonight, Barry Bonds tied Hank Aaron’s longstanding mark of 755 career home runs. The unlucky pitcher was a non-entity named Clay Hensley.

We choose to remember Barry Bonds by looking at this 1998 photo. A lithe yet menacing hitter who possessed a dangerous outfield arm and was one of the best all-around baseball players in the 1990s. We believe his statistics from 1986-1998 were strong enough to put him in the Hall of Fame.

The cartoonish statistics he’s put up from 1999 to now? We simply choose to ignore them (McGwire’s, too). We’re not here to turn this into a “Let’s tar and feather Bonds!” post - we’ll leave that to Lupica et al who are sure to chime in tomorrow.

Based on the tone of the occasional commenter here, though, it seems as if there is some lingering doubt about whether or not Bonds actually cheated. We implore that small segment of the population to read Game of Shadows. Do yourself a favor and take a few minutes and read this excerpt from the book before commenting.

Feel free to lay the blame anywhere you want - baseball, Bud Selig, Mark McGwire, journalists with their heads in the sand - but we’ll stick to the facts for our sanity: Bonds hit more than 45 homers six times in his career; five of them came after 1999, when he began using performance-enhancing drugs. By then, he was 34 and past his prime. That is an age when nearly all ballplayers watch as their skills and statistics erode. Beauty’s slow fade kicks in. Thanks to the Cream and Clear, and a cocktail of other drugs, Bonds was able to flourish.

This is not to say Bonds is an avatar of evil, just that he’s a cheater. After the jump, his federal testimony on the cream and clear:

“At the end of [the] 2002, 2003 season, when I was going through [a bad period,] my dad died of cancer…. I was fatigued, just needed recovery you know, and this guy says, ‘Try this cream, try this cream,’” he said. “And Greg came to the ballpark and said, you know, ‘This will help you recover.’ And he rubbed some cream on my arm … gave me some flaxseed oil, man. It’s like, ‘Whatever, dude.’”

Bonds was shown a vial that the government believed had contained the Clear. Bonds insisted it was for flaxseed oil. He said he had ingested the substance by placing a couple of drops under his tongue — the prescribed method for taking the BALCO steroid but hardly the common way to down flaxseed oil.

“And I was like, to me, it didn’t even work,” he told the grand jury. “You know me, I’m 39 years old. I’m dealing with pain. All I want is the pain relief, you know? … I never asked Greg. When he said it was flaxseed oil, I just said, ‘Whatever.’ It was in the ballpark … in front of everybody. I mean, all the reporters, my teammates. I mean, they all saw it. I didn’t hide it … . You know, trainers come up to me and say, ‘Hey, Barry, try this.’”