JUICING DEBATE WATERED DOWN.

Byline: KEVIN MODESTI

So much for the thinking man's favorite baseball question of this big- muscles era - the topic that launched a thousand boozy debates and one or two must-read sports columns.

How will history choose to remember Barry Bonds, as the greatest of his and maybe anybody's time or as a freak of performance-enhancement science?

Today that question sails as wide of the mark as any four pitches to Bonds with first base empty; lands as soggy as an inside fastball to the Giants' cleanup hitter with the wind blowing out at Pac Bell Park; sounds as quaintly old-fashioned as that name for the San Francisco ballpark.

With the announcement Monday that Bonds has been voted by baseball writers as the National League's Most Valuable Player for the seventh time, it's time to admit that history has already decided how it will remember him.

Seven MVP trophies. That's more than any other pair of players in major-league history, the only men with as many as three being Jimmie Foxx, Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial, Yogi Berra, Roy Campanella, Mickey Mantle and Mike Schmidt.

Put another way, that's as many as the combined total of Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron, Pete Rose, Reggie Jackson, Rickey Henderson and Ken Griffey Jr.

Barring the discovery of Bonds' batting-glove prints on a smoking syringe, history has rendered its verdict on the immortal-or-impostor question.

Fifty years from now, historians will look back on what Bonds' contemporaries thought of his accomplishments, and they'll read about the response to his 2001 feat of 73 home runs, the single-season record; to his 703 career homers, close enough to Ruth's 714 and Aaron's 755 to pass both next season; and the game's first 40-year-old batting champion since Ted Williams.

They'll read about seven MVP trophies. And four in a row. Unbelievable. More than anybody in any sport except Wayne Gretzky in hockey, whose relatively tiny talent pool blunts the comparison.

They'll read about three MVP trophies before Bonds turned 30 and grew from the lean-framed superstar of the Pirates to the suspiciously bulked-up powerhouse of the Giants.

This is key. His father was a major-league star, his aunt was a record-setting hurdler and he was a prep and college All-American. He didn't get good all of a sudden.

They'll read about 232 walks this summer, 120 of them intentional, both numbers unprecedented shows of respect.

The Giants and Dodgers played six crucial games the final two weekends of the season. Bonds was walked 14 times (five intentionally). Adrian Beltre, who would become the MVP vote runner-up, was walked three times (none intentionally).

The Dodgers and Cardinals played four playoff games. Beltre wasn't walked at all, and Albert Pujols, who would be third in the MVP vote, was walked three times (none intentionally).

In a day when a 2.9 percent edge in the presidential vote is thought to create a ``mandate,'' how big a margin of superiority over the rest of baseball does Bonds have to establish before the steroids question is moot?

Look, I say that as somebody who believes steroids are a blight on every sport they touch, who believes players' health and fans' faith should be protected from drugs more than they are, who believes baseball's management and players' union should have done a lot more before now to institute meaningful drug testing and penalties.

But that's a different issue than, ``Is Barry Bonds the greatest of this (and possibly any) generation, or is he a product of the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative chemistry sets?''

One good reason to think Bonds is a performance-enhancing drug user is that, well, Ken Caminiti did it and Jose Canseco did it and others surely did it. Not everybody did it, but enough to make everybody a suspect.

If an unhealthy percentage of major-league stars did it, and Bonds has a five-MVP Award lead on any other active major-leaguer - and a one-MVP Award lead over every other active National Leaguer - isn't it likely he's just way ahead of the pack on merit?

The guy is going to get his seventh MVP trophy.

And some think it should be his eighth or ninth. He was second to Terry Pendleton in 1991, Jeff Kent in 2000.

Fifty-six years ago last August, Babe Ruth died. His contemporaries knew he'd been a foul-mouthed spendthrift who wasted too much of his baseball energy in bars and brothels. Nevertheless, whatever doubts they had about his character, they instantly remembered him as ``probably the greatest ball player who ever lived,'' as Red Smith put it in his 1948 obituary column, ``Ty Cobb and Honus Wagner and the rest notwithstanding''

After his 19th major-league season, Barry Bonds' career has come up for review again. His contemporaries loathe his cold personality and suspect he has topped off his God-given talent with the finest in muscle fuel.

Despite whatever ill will that may inspire, they stamp him as the king of his era and give him 94 percent of the National League's MVP first-place votes the past three years (while the American League MVPs in that span received 40 percent).

History's judgment? The more awards Bonds wins, the less is left for history to judge.