"In court today, Barry Bonds should be sentenced to a year of TiVo, or maybe less.

The judge, Susan Illston, has an uncommonly easy decision to make in the latest stage of a sports drug case that has become an endless Russian nesting-doll. The two defendants who were convicted in her court on similar charges, cyclist Tammy Thomas and track coach Trevor Graham, received six months to a year of house arrest. The court's probation office recommended roughly the same sentence for baseball's home-run king.

The choices about Bonds' future won't be so simple for the Giants, Major League Baseball and the game's Hall of Fame voters, who will see Bonds' name make its inaugural appearance on the ballot next year. The bet here is that:

-- The former Giant misses the 75 percent vote he needs to get in the first time around but eventually ends up in Cooperstown.

-- He eases his way back into the Giants' distinguished-alumni fold (a process that seemed to begin almost immediately after his obstruction-of-justice conviction in April).

-- MLB does not do damage control on his behalf, as it did for Mark McGwire when the Cardinals hired the game's original steroidal usurper of a home-run crown as their batting coach. But the commissioner's office may intervene in some way if the San Francisco franchise, still partly owned by a family with deep emotional ties to Bonds, insists on putting him in uniform to work with current players.

No one knows for sure whether Bonds wants an active role in baseball now, or whenever his case finally concludes. His lawyers have indicated that they are determined to pursue an appeal of the obstruction conviction.

But if Bonds receives only a sentence of confinement to his Beverly Hills mansion, they might drop the case so that he can move forward in his life, minus a growing pile of legal fees."