As Barry Bonds approaches the most important of all American sports records — the career home run number — I can’t help but feel overwhelmingly sad. My employer sums up my feelings nicely.

This should be an incredibly exciting time in baseball, akin to the McGwire-Sosa home run chase of a few years back when we all willingly put our our blinders about performance-enhancing drugs. Those blinders are off now, of course, and Bonds’ chase for the record has become something akin to a death watch because of the taint surrounding it. His recent power slump isn’t helping matters, as we all wait and wait and wait for him to get the damn thing over with.

It could have been worse, I suppose: For a long time, projections indicated Bonds might break the record at dumpy old RFK, where the homer ball might have rattled through a section of empty seats amid a handful of indifferent fans. That could still happen, although it’s a lot less likely now — but the irony of having this ‘record’ set in a near-empty stadium that is in the last weeks of its baseball life would add sadness atop sadness.