San Francisco ? When baseball’s top talents and famous faces gathered in Pittsburgh this week for the All-Star game, Barry Bonds was nowhere to be seen.

The Giants slugger is batting just .249 with 12 homers, numbers that wouldn’t prompt even a courtesy invite. And though Bonds often has said he enjoys the midseason event, the sport’s highest-profile player didn’t show up voluntarily at his former baseball home.

In recent weeks, the wattage has been turned way up on the ever-glaring spotlight of the steroid scandal that defines his career just as much as his 720 career homers, 35 behind Hank Aaron’s major-league record.

Sometime in the next few weeks, a federal grand jury is expected to wrap up its probe of possible tax-evasion charges and whether Bonds lied under oath by telling an earlier grand jury he never knowingly took steroids.

The chance that one of the game’s greatest sluggers could be facing prison time has sent the rumor mill into overdrive.

The golden years of Bonds’ career are a morass of scandal, embarrassment and now, possible indictment. He isn’t the player he once was. His knees ache all the time. Fans in 29 other cities mostly despise him – and San Francisco was struggling to stay above .500 entering a weekend series with Philadelphia.

All in time for his 42nd birthday later this month.

Though Bonds never has had much to say publicly, he’s steadfastly unwilling to retreat into that shadowy, silent pseudo-exile already occupied by Mark McGwire, Rafael Palmeiro, Sammy Sosa and others – the sluggers who revitalized baseball with their feats, then shook the sport with widespread allegations about the way they did it.

Though Bonds waffles constantly on whether he’ll play next season, he still believes he can leave the sport on his own terms, with a raised chin and a positive legacy for his children. He may be the only one who believes it – but Bonds always claims that’s the only opinion that matters to him.

“Say goodbye to Barry? You think I’m leaving?” he said last week when asked about a farewell tour of Pittsburgh. “It can’t be goodbye to Barry yet until Barry wants to say goodbye.”

Bonds now plays a unique game – not pure baseball, but something that’s far from boring.

Every trip to the plate sets stadiums abuzz, filling the air with flashbulb pops from hundreds of cameras. He rarely runs full speed on ground balls even when he has a good chance to reach base, and every moderate strain of effort is cause for grimacing and concern.

His outfield play is inelegant, to put it kindly – but every day he’s healthy, Bonds is in manager Felipe Alou’s lineup, chasing homer records and still threatening pitchers with a swing that hasn’t lost much zip.

“He’s still Barry, and people are still scared of him,” Alou said recently. “That’s not going to change.”

Bonds pursues his own strange game during a scandal that defies the limits of believability, tests the public’s interest and patience, and colors everything the Giants do.

He faces the possibility of perjury and tax-evasion charges – or the possibility that nothing will happen, that Bonds’ only sentence will come from the court of public opinion, which arrived at its verdict months ago.

But not even Bonds knows where he’ll play next season. His contract in San Francisco will be up, and the Giants are keeping quiet about their intentions.

The second half of the season could be Bonds’ chance to prove he still can play at his lofty standards for a 22nd season – and despite his mediocre average and spotty power stroke, there are plenty of reasons for hope.

His on-base percentage was a formidable .474 at the break, with Bonds drawing 74 walks from still-wary pitchers. He has just 39 RBIs in 69 games, vanishing into prolonged homer droughts, but has stayed as healthy as can be expected from a 40-something with two bum knees.

But one aspect of Bonds’ tumultuous tenure is unlikely to change: The slugger will be vilified in every ballpark but his waterfront home, where adoring fans – still achingly grateful for his decision to join the woebegone Giants as a free agent in 1993 – will cheer his every move.

“My thing in San Francisco is based on the fans,” Bonds told MLB.com. “If they want me back, then that’s probably what I’d want to do. It’s my home. That’s where I’d want to be.”