I stood there for the whole hour, in the middle of the media mob at the table where Barry Bonds was sitting, my tape recorder purring and my brain numbing.

I have since seen this session on the eve of the All-Star game described as “entertaining” by a writer for a national sports magazine.

To each his own.

As Bonds consistently belittled the questions and intelligence of the media surrounding him, as he talked about wiping out Babe Ruth and about the importance of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Mo. (an important museum, indeed, that Bonds had snubbed when it staged a dinner in his honor 17 months ago), I didn’t view him as entertaining as much as insufferably arrogant and hypocritical.

What’s new?

Bonds is who he is and what he is — as locked into a persona as he is to a fat fastball.

Make no mistake: Nothing should distract from the amazing and ongoing scope of his accomplishments.

He hit 73 home runs at 37, won a batting title at 38.

Now, turning 39 Thursday and carrying the burden of his father’s struggle with cancer, Bonds may be headed for his sixth Most Valuable Player Award, powering the San Francisco Giants into first place in the National League West lead by hitting 30 home runs at the break to join Jimmie Foxx as the only players to do it 12 consecutive seasons.

“I can still do the things that keep me in a group (with the game’s best players), but I can’t keep up with them any more on an all-around basis (because of diminishing defense),” Bonds said with a measure of humility in Chicago, where he also repeated an earlier statement that, since he lives in Los Angeles, his ultimate future may be as a designated hitter with the Angels, although he would prefer to stay in the National League.

With that, of course, Bonds is getting ahead of himself.

His continuing ascent up the home run ladder will be as a Giant — and he began the second half only 17 behind his godfather Willie Mays, No. 3 on the list at 660.

After Mays, only Ruth (714) and Hank Aaron (755) are left, and in remarks that can only be construed as biased and colored, Bonds said he is only really interested in erasing Ruth, and he further used the All-Star platform to blitz baseball reporters and historians for consistently failing to give Negro leagues players the appreciation and respect they are due.

“You have a Negro Leagues museum over here in Kansas City, and you have a Hall of Fame over here (in Cooperstown, N.Y.), and yet you tell me there’s no segregation and discrimination in baseball?” Bonds said. “Why isn’t there one institution? We, as future black Hall of Famers, or future minorities — even Hispanics — should recognize the Negro Leagues museum because we are an extension of that museum. We could put stuff in the regular Hall of Fame too, but we are an extension of that (Kansas City) museum.”

Bonds is to be applauded for becoming an enthusiastic supporter of the Kansas City museum and urging minority athletes to visit it and learn the history (” … without that, it’s going to be wiped away”).

It’s just that he was citing segregation having never seen the extensive Negro Leagues displays at the Cooperstown museum and he had not even responded to messages from the Kansas City museum when it staged the dinner in his honor.