Strange Brew

Asked if he had spoken to Bonds recently, Selig paused to consider the question as if hearing it for the first time. "Not for a long time," he said. Why not? "It's just the way it's worked out."

Occupying the third leg of the triangle is Aaron, who, unlike Selig, long ago made plain his intention to avoid Bonds's record-breaking homer -- at one point joking, "I don't even know how to spell his name."

His Milwaukee days long behind him, Aaron now lives in Atlanta, works for the Atlanta Braves and seldom visits Milwaukee, a concession more to age -- Aaron is 73 -- than anything else.

Still, according to Selig, even in absentia Aaron remains a towering presence in Milwaukee.

"Hank Aaron is not only an American icon, but he's huge in Milwaukee and throughout Wisconsin," Selig said in a telephone interview Thursday. "When Hank is here, if you were to walk down the street with him, you wouldn't believe it."

Aaron was last in Milwaukee on June 7 for a ceremony to dedicate a plaque commemorating his 755th homer, and he is expected back in August to attend a reunion of the Milwaukee Braves' 1957 World Series championship team.

Aaron "used to come in [to Milwaukee] a lot," said Houston Astros Manager Phil Garner, who managed the Brewers from 1992 to '99, when Selig still owned the team. "But it was basically because of Bud Selig. Hank was there more as a baseball liaison than anything else, more in an official role than as an honored guest."

Selig first grew fond of Aaron from a distance, as a young man and Braves fan in Milwaukee in the 1950s, then came to know him personally when Selig, a local businessman, became involved in the team as its largest public stockholder. Selig often boasts of having witnessed Aaron's first home run in 1954 and his final one in 1976.

"I've known Hank for 50 years," Selig said Thursday. "He is one of the most gracious, dignified people I know. And he was always that way. He's a great fan. He's the same wonderful person he was 50 years ago. I have a lot of personal affection for him, an enormous amount of respect."

If Milwaukee fans have any special animosity for Bonds, who has come to town to demolish their favored son's sacred record, it was not evident Friday night. Bonds's at-bats were greeted by a familiar mixture -- call it six parts booing, one part cheering -- that remains mostly unchanged from city to city when the Giants are on the road. If anything, Brewers fans were more polite than most, in a Midwestern sort of way.

It was like that, too, with Selig, perhaps the most passionate baseball fan in all of Wisconsin and the great Midwest. Asked during Friday night's game if he would consider Bonds's record legitimate, Selig demurred politely.

"I won't get into that," he said. "We're here to watch, to see whether he does it. And I'm not passing judgment on that, nor should I. . . . I know what I feel. I know what I think. But I can't. . . . "

Here, Selig cut himself off.

"I'm here," he said softly, "and I think it's the right thing to do."