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Sitting in the Coors Field press box Thursday night, I watched the Colorado Rockies genuflect before the greatness of Barry Bonds.

Sticking to manager Clint Hurdle's pregame promise to pitch Bonds "very carefully, if at all," the Rockies intentionally walked Bonds three times, his 72nd, 73rd and 74th intentional passes of the year, and were it not for a ninth-inning meltdown by closer Shawn Chacon, who blew a 4-3 lead en route to San Francisco's eventual 7-5 win, Hurdle's approach would have worked perfectly. In any event, Hurdle navigated around Bonds, preventing the game's best hitter from driving in any runs.

Watching Bonds bat is the single greatest thrill baseball offers today. The frisson he sends through any ballpark is instantly palpable. Thursday, each time he strode to the on-deck circle, droves of fans poured back to their seats from the concourse -- and both dugout benches emptied, even his teammates up on the top step, pressed against the rail the better to watch him work.

The imminent possibility of a graceful wrist-flick home run, better with Bonds at the dish than with any player in memory, seduces, as does the idea that we're watching a rare man, like the Napoleon of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace, outside and above history and his fellows.

That Bonds' at-bats are so often neutralized by intentional walks appears to make both him and the fans positively angry. Bonds has now taken to a petulant stare, a weight-of-the-world sigh as he is issued his four balls. Usually, when the count reaches 2-0 he unbuckles the elbow guard from his right arm and slings it toward the San Francisco dugout under a cascade of boos. (More evidence that this is Bizarro World: Bonds has recently begun complaining that all his walks are fatiguing him, because he must stand on base so often. We should all have such problems.)

At SBC Park, vendors sell rubber chickens at $10 a pop that fans can wave as taunts when Bonds is demurred to. So powerful is the instinctual response to a Bonds walk -- that the paying customers have been cheated -- that correctives have been floated all season. Should the intentional walk rule be modified? Perhaps teams should only be allowed to walk him once a game?

As I watched Bonds walk for the third time, it struck me that, in addition to being simply another testimonial to the man's uniqueness -- like Lew Alcindor's dominance prompting the NCAA to outlaw the dunk -- such suggested rule changes miss the point entirely. Bonds' home runs are captivating, but the truly historic dimension of his season, the one we will tell our grandchildren about and the one that will forever squat in the record books as an absurd anomaly, is the fear he has stricken into his opponents as reflected in his free passes.

He has 74 intentional walks now, a record. The next-closest hitter, Jim Thome of the Phillies, has 18. Eighteen! Bonds' total is equal to 411 percent of his closest competitor. Consider that proportion, in comparison with other landmark single-season records:

In 2001, Bonds' 73 home runs set a single-season record. Sammy Sosa was next, with 64. Bonds' total was 114 percent of Sosa's. If Bonds had outhomered his opponents to the same degree he outwalks them, Sosa would have had 18 homers. In 1930, Hack Wilson had 191 RBIs, Lou Gehrig was next with 174. That's 110 percent. Had Wilson dominated to Bonds' degree, Gehrig would have had 46 RBIs. And it goes on:

Bonds intentionally walking 74 times while Thome has 18 is equivalent, in the above cases, to Collins having 63 hits, Raines having 32 steals, McGinnity having 10 wins, Eck having 14 saves. Those hypothetical totals are unfathomable.

So I submit that, rather than wringing our hands, waving rubber poultry, demanding rules changes or refunds, we ought to savor Bonds' intentional walks. No, there is no obvious drama in watching four tosses wide of the plate, but the joy of watching Bonds is the knowledge that we are not watching mere brute power but a phenomenon of historical moment. And there is nothing Bonds is doing that is more implausible, more defiant of precedent than so intimidating the sport that the only sensible action is to concede defeat to him.